We are shortly going to launch a sales funnel training product because the importance of having a sales funnel in your business cannot be under-estimated.
If you do not have a well-designed sales funnel in your business then you will be leaving a lot of money on the table.
However, it is one thing to know this in theory but, in practice, creating a sales funnel can seem technically difficult to put together. The purpose of our new product, which is called Honey Trap Funnels, is to demystify the whole process of how to build a high-converting sales funnel.
Generally, the longer your sales funnel, the more money you will make.
Also, you may need to redefine the meaning of ‘sales funnel’ to extend to all your marketing after the initial sales have taken place i.e. to include your back-end marketing. A sales funnel like this requires careful planning and execution.
Creating the web pages for a well-executed sales funnel can also be a barrier but with sales funnel template software like Optimize Press and WP Profit Builder (which I reviewed recently) building these pages quickly has become a lot easier with their fully-featured templates.
I also notice that the Thrive Content Builder is moving in this direction too as they have started creating Landing Page Templates with a view to creating many more page templates in future.
In Honey Trap Funnels we will cover:
how to select products and services for the funnel
how to plan your sales funnel
how to create your sales funnel
how to move traffic through your funnel and how to recover traffic at the drop-off points
how to test and monitor your sales funnel for higher conversions
some examples of simple funnels
and much more
There will also be an upsell where we cover all of this in more detail including examples of some actual funnels that you could build for yourself.
In the meantime, whenever you buy a product, it is worth watching how the vendor has constructed their sales funnel.
Alternatively, simply look at product vendor JV pages to see what they are doing. However, don’t forget that after their initial product sale, they will be taking their customers through their back-end marketing system which is an extension of the front-end sales funnel so you may not get the full picture.
If you are a customer, however, you will be exposed to their full sales funnel and this is instructional.
To execute sales funnels effectively requires that your business is well-planned and organised about how it executes the process of putting a sales funnel in place.
We think that this sales funnel training will therefore be very instructive to many online business owners who may fail to understand how important sales funnels are in making money.
Email Swipe Generator is a new product that is being launched shortly by two of my fellow coaching students – Daniel Madeira and Scrembo. Their expertise is in solo ads and email marketing.
They commissioned me to set up a membership site for them and to integrate the site with JVZoo so you can look forward to this launch shortly.
Here is a snap shot of the website before content is added to it (- I created the graphics):
When I take our dog for a walk, I slip a small camera into my pocket and simply snap the scenes of Stratford-upon-Avon that I see. When I return home, I quickly upload the pictures to my computer and process them through Photoshop. I use a combination of Photoshop Actions and ‘play’ with the images until I find something that appeals to my eye.
Here are a collection of some of my pictures – click on them to take a better look:
All this is within 5 to 10 minutes of my door-step. It seems foolish to measure wealth in terms of money. When you take the time to look around you – i mean really look, you begin to see just how wonderful life is.
My grandfather used to paint and photograph the local scenes (-a number of which adorn my office wall -) and he would be interested to see what I am doing with my photographs – I like to think he would approve
I hope you enjoyed these scenes from Stratford-upon-Avon and maybe they will inspire you to look more closely at what is on your door-step!
Kevin Fahey is launching Solo Ad Escape today and we have received an advance copy to review it.
Solo Ad Escape recounts how Kevin Fahey transitioned out of his solo ad business into the product creation business model. He was earning about $5,000 per month from solo ads but he was watching his conversions decline as more and more solo ad vendors opened up for business.
Kevin was also worried about the impact hat solo ads were having on his reputation.
Ken is now earning around $20 to $30,000 per month through the product launch model. He is employing some quite advanced traffic strategies and these are all set out in Solo Ad Escape which is a low-priced PDF.
Here is a review of Solo ad Escape by my partner Chris Cole:
To purchase your copy of Kevin Fahey’s Solo Ad Escape – click this link.
WP Profit Builder is a new WordPress plugin that incorporates:
a drag and drop page editor with tonnes of features including live updates as you make changes to the page in the editor
around 55 pre-made page template designs that you can simply plug your own content into
This post is a review of the WP Profit Builder plugin.
This plugin is priced very competitively at the moment and is a serious competitor to both Optimize Press (that has a relatively clunky page editor) and Lead Pages that requires a hefty monthly subscription.
The plugin has been produced by Sean Donohue , a very experience internet marketer.
We will be using this plugin to build our next which is Honey Trap Funnels due for launch on 17th October 2014.
I think that I have discovered a graphic artist in myself.
I have always been interested in pictures and art. My house walls are covered in other people’s art that I have acquired over the years!
Also, when I was much younger, I used to enjoy drawing but I gave it up as it did not seem to have much income earning potential as a skill.
In working with Photoshop, I have discovered that I have a passion for working with photographs.
Here are a few examples of pictures taken of my grandchildren and how I have changed them in Photoshop using a combination of Photoshop actions and touching up with Photoshop tools:
Apart from creating a family calendar for Christmas, and using these skills to create graphics for my products, I’m not sure where I am going with these skills! All I know is that I enjoy the technical and artistic challenge of working with graphics like this.
If you have any suggestions as to how I can make a living from doing this I would be very grateful.
Am I graphic artist? I don’t know but all I know is that I really love working with photographs like this – the act of creating something nice is very satisfying.
Productivity Made Simple was launched last Friday and whilst the sales letter and upsell offer converted very well, the product simply failed to attract a lot of traffic or attention in the market place.
The product was about the fact that knowledge doesn’t change results unless you take action on it. We show our customers how to put in place strategies for taking more action in order to get better results!
Whilst we have made a bunch of sales, the revenue returns are simply not enough to compensate for the amount of effort that we put into this product. We priced this product low and gave away most of the revenue to affiliates to entice them to promote for us.
Whilst Productivity Made Simple has some great content within it, most people buying info products are looking for a ‘quick fix’ rather than ‘climbing the steep hill’ of building a real business.
This is a big learning point.
I have had a tendency to try to over-deliver. Whilst this is a commendable trait it also has certain drawbacks:
it takes me longer to create and launch the product
the products become too big which makes them harder to consume
the product needs to match the price – I can’t sell content for $7 that others sell for $97 or $297 – this a fast way to go out of business. (It also, reflects on the perceived quality of the product.)
I also have a tendency to help others without asking for payment. Again a commendable trait but it slows me up with my own work. For example, I spent 2 hours on Saturday trying to help a friend to fix his sales funnel.
Creating ‘Productivity Made Simple’ got me thinking about my own productivity. To speed up I need to:
create one problem, one solution at one sitting type of products
that take about an hour to consume
with a very simple funnel
and a simplified delivery system (we have been using Optimize Press 2 – whilst it creates a lovely looking site it is very slow to work with!)
the whole process of product creation needs to be systemized and templatised.
maintain focused on my own work.
The other critical factor in product creation is support. The support desk can be a significant time-suck, particularly if there are technical problems. The more complex the product is, the more support tickets you can expect which is another argument in favour of simplicity.
We also need to be surveying the market to find out what the market wants. For example, video products are currently very popular as recently video type products have been on JVZoo’s best-seller list.
Shakespeare said:
[boxibt style=”gray”]“To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.” [/boxibt]
Only by taking action and failing many times do we ultimately learn our craft.
more careful planning is required – to scope the product, research the market place and to keep the product focused i.e. to avoid scope creep.
a system for product launches is required so that ultimately some of the work can be safely outsourced and to increase productivity
we actually completed and launched the product – the product is available as a bonus for other products etc.
I learned that there is smart and effective productivity and how easy it is to become a ‘busy fool’!
I am pleased about the quality of the Productivity Made Simple product that we created but it took us a month to create which was really far to long so I take this thought into creating our next product on sales funnels.
As Henry Ford said – ‘Failure is just an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’ We didn’t exactly fail with Productivity Made Simple but it is now time to begin again more intelligently!
The video below features Daniel Pink who is talking about the surprising truth about what motivates us.
He talks about how the traditional ‘carrot and stick’ incentives don’t work for any task that requires even rudimentary cognitive or creative skills. If the task is purely mechanical then the carrot and stick incentive scheme will work.
He goes on to talk about what does work for cognitive jobs and tasks – basically you have to treat people like people which means that they are driven by 3 basic drivers or needs:
A desire for autonomy i.e. to be self-directed
A desire for mastery i.e. to be making progress in their job
A desire for purpose i.e. to be part of something larger than ourselves.
I can totally relate to this because this is partly why I left banking in 2001.
we lost a good deal of autonomy at branch level when computerisation enabled Head Office to monitor precisely what we were doing and started to interfere in everything we were doing at branch level. Yes there are risks with autonomy but on the whole I think the majority of us had much greater job satisfaction when we could say that these were the results we created without Head Office looking over our shoulders all the time and constantly raining a shower of rules and regulations down upon us. They wanted staff compliance and thereby they lost staff engagement.
the job changed from having a mastery of risk management and customer service to wanting us to master sales and achievement of sales targets – these two skills are to some extent conflicting with each other because there were many occasions that it would have been better to walk away from a transaction but staff were driven forward to do things that weren’t good business by the need to achieve a sales target.
and I do believe that we lost a sense of purpose. My purpose was always to help my customers to become better and bigger businesses that served the community over the long term. I didn’t share the new purpose of maximising short term profits by selling banking services. I simply couldn’t get on board with a purpose that didn’t align with my own and hence I decided to leave because it simply became too stressful to buck the system.
I now compare my banking job with internet marketing:
I am totally self-directed with the freedom to choose my own business model and strategy and to acquire new skills in areas that interest me.
I love the challenge of trying to master internet marketing which, whilst simple at one level, is also a highly complex area where the sands are constantly shifting through the shear creativity of our online marketing community.
and my purpose is to help my customers to make money online by serving and improving the lives of other people through the provision of information, training and software and thereby to provide for our families. (It is very important to articulate your purpose clearly if you want other people to be energised and inspired by that purpose.)
The video below is good use of 40 minutes of your time as it will make you think about how you motivate yourself and other people in future. This is just one of the 325 videos that is part of the upsell package to Productivity Made Simple which we are launching on 22nd September 2014 for a surprisingly low price.
Eric Thomas is a motivational speaker, educator, author, preacher and activist.
He was born in Chicago, IL and grew up on the streets of Detroit, MI. He proclaimed that he had very difficult childhood experiences that pushed him to leave home and drop out of school. Instead, he met a pastor and started to build a mentoring relationship that led him to success.
His messages are always inspiring and have helped thousands of young people nationwide. He also inspires young people to break their bad habits and to reach for new levels of personal and spiritual achievement.
He became well known for his “Thank God it’s Monday” videos. This is my playlist of 13 of his motivational videos:
This video playlist will be one among many that we have created in conjunction with our forthcoming launch of Productivity Made Simple – these video playlists will be part of our upsell offer and there are 325 inspirational videos in total. If you are looking for inspiration or motivation, then there is no better way to start your day than to have a daily dose of inspiration to get you into the correct mindset.
Eric Thomas and his ‘Thank God It’s Monday’ video trainings are just a small sample of what we have compiled for our customers.
Here is a brief summary of the new products in the pipeline for the next month or so. These are new products that Chris Cole and I are creating.
After our success with The Hangout Cash, and our effort to provide tremendous value to our members through follow-up webinars, we have decided that we really need to refocus on launching new products.
Chris Cole & I have decided to launch one product a week. These products will be tightly focused and high quality – meant for consumption in around an hour or so. Ideal for the ‘one problem, one solution, at one sitting’ type of product.
With this in mind, here is our planned schedule for the next 4 products and the planned launch dates:
#1 Productivity Made Simple – in this product Chris and I have used Google Hangouts to create a series of training about improving productivity. This includes a review of some of the best productivity tools that we have used.This will be launch on 15th September 2014. Rather than a blockbuster product it was originally destined as ‘list-bait’ but we will launch it nevertheless and see how it fares in the marketplace.
#2 Honey Trap Funnels – this is a product that I have had in the pipeline for a while now as I wanted to offer a cloned sales funnel that could be quickly and easily deployed because you simply have to slot your own product offers into the pages. We will also be reviewing different types of funnel and we have a nice marketing-twist in mind for this! This product will also enable me to establish a joint, self-liquidating sales funnel for our partnership too which we can start driving paid traffic and grow our list exponentially. Launch date 22nd September.
#3 Launch a WSO in 3 Days – Chris & I are prolific product creators. In this product we will be demonstrating how it is possible to launch a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) in 3 days when you systemise the entire process. This will be an opportunity for us to review our product creation systems too. Launch date 29th September.
#4 Webinars For Local Businesses – the name of this product has yet to be established but the basic principle is that we will be exploring how Google Hangouts could be used by local businesses. This was something we covered in The Hangout Cash Code but we want to dive deeper into this aspect of video marketing for local businesses. We think this is a largely unexplored opportunity and we will get creative about how local busineses can use this technology to grow their business. Launch date 6th October.
These products may be replaced by others if we see an opportunity that needs pursuing urgently, but this is our plan for the next few weeks. I also want to create a product about email marketing, so expect that to be on the list in the near future!
In addition to these products, we have been helping Saul Maraney, one of our students, to launch his first product as a WSO – it’s called The Showcase App Profit Formula, which is due to go live on 9th September. This has a very good upsell – comprehensive training on Google+ which is exciting because I see a lot of untapped potential in Google+. In fact, even more so than Facebook for B2B marketing.
Also, quietly in the background, I am putting together a product called ‘Video Hooks’ which is a larger product about video marketing which will be excellent to add into our sales funnel. Part of the content for this will come from a bonus session that we have promised to buyers of the product we are viewing in the paragragh below.
Chris and I have also started a weekly broadcast at Marketers Radio.com. The second episode airs tonight with two guests and we will be reviewing a product called Incredible Green Screen, made by our friend and colleague Matthew Houghton. This product reached #1 on JVZoo and has made well over 1,000 sales so this is very exciting.
We also have a LIVE event in our diary at Heathrow Airport for the 1st and 2nd November – which will be an an opportunity for Chris and I to meet physically for the first time. We will also be meeting many of the coaching students that we have been growing with over the last 12 to 18 months.
This is how a business is created – by taking action and selling stuff rather than being a perpetual consumer in training mode!
Those are the new products in the pipeline, so we have some very exciting times ahead!
I hope that you will find these 50 quotations about success inspiring and uplifting. They certainly are for me, which is why I have added them as a permanent record to my blog!
1. “We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.” Earl Nightingale
2. “There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.” Ray Goforth
3. “If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.” Thomas J. Watson
4. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” Pablo Picasso
5. “Create experiences that leave you in awe, for these will be the highlights of your life.” Ryan Blair
6. “Failure is not in your vocabulary; rather, you convert all working experiences, be they positive or negative, into fuel for future success.” Anonymous
7. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absense of fear.” Mark Twain
8. “Repetition is the father of learning, I repeat, repetition is the father of learning.” Dwayne Michael Carter
9. “Top Achievers are improvisors, not perfectionists. If you want to create more success in your life you have to move forward not knowing all the answers.” Douglas Vermeeren
10. “Weak people talk and do not act, strong people act and keep quiet.” Eliphas Levi
11. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan
12. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.” Robert Collier
13. “All success in life, whether material or spiritual, starts with the thoughts that you put into your mind every second of every minute of every day. Your outer world reflects the state of your inner world. By controlling the thoughts that you think and the way you respond to the events of your life, you begin to control your destiny.” R. Sharma
14. “The only thing that can stop you is the doubt that you carry in your mind.” Chae Richardson
15. “Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability. We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.” Thomas Edison
16. “Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life.” Dr. APJ Kalam
17. “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” Thomas Jefferson
18. “Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always some one to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising to tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has it’s victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
19. “How you see the world first determines your attitude, and then your attitude determines how the world sees you.” Mark Amend
20. “As soon as you realize that you don’t need anyone to make it in life. That’s your first step towards success.” Vusi Ndlovu
21. “Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” Anonymous
22. “The starting point of all achievement is desire.” Napolean Hill
23. “All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.” Michael John Bobak
24. “You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing.” Philippos
25. “There are some things you can’t learn from others. You have to pass through the fire.”Norman Vicent Peale
26. “Successful entrepreneurs are givers and not takers of positive energy.” Anonymous
27. “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” Stephen Covey
28. “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” Dale Carnegie
29. “When in doubt, act boldly, as if it were impossible to fail. In essence it is.” Steve Pavlina
30. “If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission.” Anonymous
31. “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
32. “An object at rest tends to stay at rest, an object in motion tends to stay in motion.” Isaac Newton
33. “The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.” Norman Vincent Peale
34. “The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
35. “Capital isn’t scarce; vision is.” Sam Walton
36. “Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners.” Robert T. Kiyosaki
37. “Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is.” Anita Roddick
38. “Action generates motivation; not the other way around.” Mark Amend
39. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill
40. “I’ve been blessed to find people who are smarter than I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have.” Russell Simmons
41. “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly.” Proverb
42. “There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” Nelson Mandela
43. “Don’t let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can do.” John Wooden
44. “Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.” Mark Victor Hansen
45. “Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.” Vaibhav Shah
46. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” Albert Einstein
47. “Success belongs to those who believe in the power of their ideas.” Michael Irwin
48. “Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.” Orison Swett Marden
49. “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts breaks their bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” Patanjali
50. “The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors.” Napoleon Hill
These quotations were ‘borrowed’ from this page – http://www.mindpowernews.com/SuccessQuotes.htm – as I wanted a permanent record of them.
These 50 quotations about success are priceless jewels that will help to sustain you on your journey in business.
I think this could be the ultimate key to your branding success and, by association, your business and monetary success (and mine!)
Please don’t read this and move on before you have taken some time out to think about how this applies to you and your business.
I had a kind of epiphany last night and I have woken at 4.45 a.m. to write my thoughts because I couldn’t get back to sleep again before I shared this.
I interviewed Kate Loving Shenk last night about her experiences with Google Hangouts but this has nothing to do with that other than the research I carried out prior to the interview.
(Incidentally, this applies just as much to me and probably 95% of people that I encounter in business.)
Prior to the interview, I was looking at Kate’s Facebook profile and website and was interested to see that she is a spiritual healer with a special interest in eradicating the fear of death. She also has 3 decades of experience as a nurse.
After meeting Kate in a Google Hangout, I realised that she has a kind and caring personality but her profile and website are not instantly magnetic and it bothers me greatly because I think they could be. (I think I need to adjust this in my own business too, by the way.)
I lay awake thinking about why we are attracted to other people and particularly the business leaders in our online community. In almost every instance their magnetic power lies in their personal story.
Let me give you some examples off the top of my head:
Brendan Burchard – at the core of his personal story is a near death experience in a road accident when his immediate thoughts turned to the question ‘did I live, did I love and did I make a difference?’ This epiphany has driven his business forward to try to offer as much value to other people as possible so that he can answer this question in the affirmative when death finally comes knocking at his door.
John Thornhill – his success as 7-figure marketer derives from his story of working on a car assembly line in the north of England and his struggles to build a business whilst working on the line full-time. His story of success is magnetic to the many people who are also struggling in a job they hate and want to emulate John’s success. We can identify fully with his story.
Omar Martin – his story of struggle as a door-to-door salesman positions him as someone that can teach us all about selling strategies. His wife was his sales manager and they have gone on to create a highly successful online business in partnership.
Dennis Becker – aka as ‘the 5-buck guy’ – he struggled with a retail store and ran up huge credit card debts before he finally found success. He went from despair to making something like $35,000 almost overnight when he promoted the Xbox. From that point on, he knew that he could succeed online and has gone on to be a highly respected and successful leader in our online community.
Ann Sieg – a leading trainer of network marketers, recounted how she struggled in network marketing until she started doing demonstrations of what happens to our gut by eating the wrong foods. She actually extruded some horrible gunk through a stocking in front of her audience in a graphical display that was probably horrifying to behold.
Dan Kennedy – his story was one of incredible struggle for many years before he finally broke through to point where he can command incredible fees for his marketing prowess.
Echkart Tolle – in his book, The Power of Now, he recounts how he was in the depths of despair and depression, to the point that he had thoughts of suicide. In fact, he said that ‘he couldn’t live with himself’ and then he started to question the ‘self’ he couldn’t ‘live with’ and he came to the realisation that it was the internal chatter which had created a fictitious ‘self’ or ‘ego’ and that, if he could remove himself from thoughts of the past and fears of the future, and just live in the present moment, he could live in a state of constant ‘bliss’. He recounts how he sat on a park bench for a couple of years in a near constant state of bliss as he began to appreciate the joy of living in the present moment. This story is magnetic to most people who also struggle with their negative thoughts.
In fact, in almost every single instance of a top brand, they have a magnetic story of struggle and redemption.
If you read about Richard Branson’s career, he flirted with business disaster for many years and even went to prison for a VAT fraud that subsequently shaped his ethical approach to business. His struggles with British Airways to establish Virgin Airways are also part of that branding story. Richard Branson’s personal story are very much part of the Virgin brand and the reason why he features in so much of their marketing.
Perhaps you can think about other successful leaders and what attracted them to you?
I can almost guarantee that it was something about their personal story that resonated deeply with you. Often it was the story of their failure and despair and subsequent recovery from that position that is a magnetic attraction to those that are still struggling to find success.
And so I return to Kate, who I mentioned at the beginning of this article.
The thing that kept me awake last night is that behind her interest in eradicating the fear of death is her personal story.
From reading her profile and website, I still don’t know what that is!
I am willing to bet that something in her personal story – perhaps her encounters with death as a nurse, or even a deep personal tragedy, has inspired her to share her experiences and insights on this subject.
The thing that really bothers me is that I don’t know.
And yet I think that this is the key to unlocking the potential of her business and income-earning ability.
And it’s the same with me, I don’t think my personal story, and why I feel I have something that I can to offer to entrepreneurs to improve their business and personal lives, is nearly as strong as it could be.
You see, it requires that we share our story of struggle and failure (something that we all experience at some point in our lives) and it shapes who we are and is at the core of why we are motivated to do important things in our lives.
The fact is that we often hate admitting our story of struggle and failure to ourselves (and particularly to other people) and we try to bury our hurt with all the stories of our successes.
It’s called ‘putting up a front’.
But by doing so, we do not connect and resonate with the very people that we can help most by sharing our story – often the exact same struggles that people are going through themselves and we can specifically help!
You see their personal experience is one of struggle and they cannot connect fully with someone who claims to have ONLY known success (- a claim that is just not credible by the way!)
‘Lifting the curtain’ and sharing our personal struggles and failures, and how we overcame them, is in fact the most important and magnetic thing we can do in our marketing.
The recent release of the film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ recounts Jordan Belfort’s struggle to rise to success, his subsequent imprisonment for fraud and he now has a successful business centred around his powerful ‘Straightline’ sales system.
But it is his personal story, and the authenticity of it, that makes him truly magnetic.
In an article I wrote a couple of months ago, I recounted how my sister had paid $15k to Bo Eason, whose main purpose is to help people to find and articulate their personal story. (If you haven’t watched the video on that page, I strongly urge you to do so!)
At an intellectual level, I fully understood the power of his consultancy but it was only when I encountered Kate’s profile, and woke up last night thinking about it, that the lesson was fully driven home.
Has Kate had many encounters with death as a result of her nursing career? Did she suffer a personal tragedy? Did she become the person that people naturally turn to when death came knocking at their door? Did she have an epiphany whilst sitting at the bedside of someone who was dying? Did they reveal the secret of finding peace when faced with the spectre of death? Did she learn to come to an understanding of death through a long journey or was it an overnight revelation?
I really, really want to know these things because they are the important factors that compel Kate to do what she is doing and would compel me to listen to what she has to say on this subject.
(I hope Kate will forgive me for talking about her specifically but, as I say, I think this same lesson applies to the majority of other businesses I encounter – it was just her unfortunate luck that her business specifically sparked this insight within me and motivated me to write this article from the heart!)
I know that I have to address my own profile and website too and refine my own personal story further because my story is not nearly as powerful as it needs to be.
But I believe that this is what makes us magnetic as leaders of our community. This is what will drive our success as a business and a brand.
No one else has exactly the same story or experiences that you or I do, so no one else can exactly replicate our own special brand or business.
The only question is ‘can you and I articulate our personal story powerfully enough so that it magnetically attracts the specific people that we can help with our unique skills and experiences?‘
I believe THAT is the key question that most service providers and product creators have to address.
It is so critical to our success and fully realising the dream or vision that we have for our business and our personal life.
In fact, I would go further, it is critical to realising our real purpose in life i.e. to improve the lives of other people through the knowledge and unique experiences we personally acquired by living through our personal journey and how we overcame the many challenges along the way.’
That’s where our brand power really lies.
And the interesting thing is that we all have the ability to help others through our own life experiences.
I truly believe that ultimately this is the key to your branding success and mine – yes, there are other factors, like design and copy, but the real power of your brand to attract the very people we can really help lies in the story that lies behind our brand. Chew on that for a while and tell me I am wrong!
I have created a logo reveal with Adobe After Effects. You can see the results of my first project below.
I have never used Adobe After Effects prior to creating this logo reveal so I am pretty pleased with the results (particularly because the training video was created by someone with a foreign accent who spoke quietly!)
I don’t think this is an area of expertise I really want to develop because it is cheap and easy to outsource this kind of stuff by buying a template from say Videohive and then getting someone on Fiverr.com to do the editing on Adobe After Effects for you.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that I should not be spending too much time learning these skills for myself but outsourcing the work to experts while I concentrate on product creation and marketing.
However, to know that I can do this for myself, if I need to, is useful and opens up more opportunities for creating stunning video products.
I recently bought a bundle of products off Envato that included this logo reveal template and I decided to give this a go. It is more complicated than I anticipated – the software takes a little getting used to but, like anything else, if you give enough time and effort to it should be easy to learn – particularly if you start with editable templates like me!
Tell me what you think of my first logo reveal using Adobe After Effects – I am sure this is basic stuff for some people but for non-technical bods like me, this is as ‘state of the art’ as it gets!
The difference between success and failure is often extremely small.
I was thinking about our recent product launch – The Hangout Cash Code. It’s a good product and we’ve made well over 450 sales in the first 2 weeks of our launch, and sales keep rolling in every day.
But I’ve got products that are equally as good that have made next to no sales!
Why is that?
The reasons are ridiculously simple.
I didn’t go the extra mile and let enough people know about the product and I didn’t make an ‘event’ out of the initial launch.
I’ve also discovered that WSO traffic is relatively poor quality – it’s much better to focus on good quality affiliate traffic – the higher initial EPC”s attract in more good-quality affiliates like bees to honey!
The plain truth is that affiliates are always looking for good products to promote to their customers. Good products are those that convert well, have few refunds and add value to the affiliates relationship with their customers by promoting them.
They want to know whether you can actually add value to the lives of their customers. In other words, that if you make a claim, such as ‘you can make $500 a day with this’, that you can actually back up your claim with evidence. After all, they want to maintain a good relationship with their customers by introducing them to legitimate and valuable products.
If you have a product like this, then you simply need to let them know about what you have and be willing to be interviewed about it. Also, to create an event or launch which they can promote. This usually means a time-limited event offering a special price or an additional bonus during the launch period.
Letting affiliates know is comparatively easy – just go into the JV Forums on Facebook and post details of your product and the launch date. Send them to a JV page or blog that has more details. If they like what they see, they will contact you.
In the case of the bigger affiliates, they will want a face-to-face interview to get more details for their list, to humanise the offer and to offer a bonus for clicking on their affiliate link. Also, they are letting the product creators, who know their own product best, do most of the selling.
It’s all so ridiculously simple but here’s the thing. You actually have to do it!
I’ve also learnt quite a bit just watching how the super-affiliates conduct their business. They use a very simple system and they use it consistently.
Making products, and not going the extra mile by marketing them, can be fatal to your wallet. I know because that was what I was doing up until the launch of The Hangout Cash Code (- the initial launch period closes down in 7 days from now.)
The difference between success and failure can literally be the failure to take that extra step in your business – small things really do matter in business and can be the difference between wild success and abject failure.
I came across the image below in Carl Picot’s Copywriting Forum with the headline – Life’s Big Question – How Can I Make More Money?
I thought that this was a terrific headline that made me stop and ponder a second…
Because this IS an important ‘life question’ that we all ask ourselves from time to time – particularly at times when money is in short supply!
The article goes on to promote a university education.
But without wishing to denigrate a university education, there are plenty of university students who leave university with a pile of debt and can’t get a well-paid job. 50% of young people in Spain are without a job and the proportion in Greece is higher still.
In fact, in my son’s business and marketing class at Nottingham Trent university, he was the only one who managed to get a job before leaving university and no one in his girlfriends class on property had a job at leaving time.
Ironically, both my son and his girlfriend are currently on a 2 month sabbatical tour of the USA and my son messaged me yesterday to say that he has a business idea he wants to pursue. Also, he told me that there are plenty of jobs for graduates in Grand Cayman.
In other words, for those that are motivated, the opportunities are abundant.
You just need to be prepared to take a more global approach to finding them because we are now competing in an international marketplace rather than a local or even national marketplace.
This, in a nutshell, is why I chose to strategically pursue internet marketing as a skill – I wanted to be able to transcend the vicissitudes of local markets so that if the UK was in depression, I could find a marketplace that was in a growth phase.
It’s also worth mentioning that in most countries who don’t have English as their first language, English is the second language. That means that English speakers have more access to market-places than any other language. That’s a competitive advantage right there.
That’s why our latest product about Google Hangouts is so critically important – it’s the ability to transcend local and national boundaries that makes it an excellent tool for selling goods and services and for forming relationships.
So if choosing internet marketing was a strategic decision in the first place, choosing Google Hangouts as a communications and promotions tool is another strategic decision too.
The more I think about the power of Hangouts for building relationships, the more excited I get.
I predict that promotions via Hangouts, rather than through Email marketing (or perhaps complementary to), is the way forwards simply because they will convert so much better.
Now you can look the marketer in the eye and ask yourself if you would trust this person – they are no longer hidden behind a veil of secrecy. They can demonstrate and show you how their product or service works and you can ask questions before buying.
So in answer to life’s big question – How Can I Make More Money? – I recommend that you purchase The Hangout Cash Code because I predict that it will become strategically important within your business to acquire these skills and we show you many methods for monetising Hangouts. (Every business, whether offline or online, needs this tool.)
We have been awarded JVZoo Product of the Day for Hangout Cash Code which is a massive achievement for us.
It sort of marks a ‘coming of age’ for me in particular because it is recognition from my peers that we have created some value in our community. However, my belief in the product goes far beyond that. It is the business model that I want to really focus on within my business because it is so powerful.
Hangout Cash Code positions Chris and I as leaders in this technology and it is not a product that we are going to drop and then move onto to something else. Google Hangouts will be used by us almost every day in our business to really gain competitive advantage.
I genuinely believe that you should get a copy of our product so you can find out why. The front end product is a 90 page PDF that shows you how to get started with Hangouts and then numerous strategies for monetising them.
Being awarded JVZoo Product of the Day for Hangout Cash Code just endorses the fact that this is a great product and business model.
In the pre-launch phase of Hangout Cash Code, we have also been interviewed by Mike Thomas, also known as Mike From Maine.
Mike runs a very popular video interview business via Skype and we were flattered to be asked for an interview. As I said to him, ‘I almost feel that I know you’ even though we had never spoken or met. He said ‘that is the power of what I do’ and I suppose that is the real power of Google Hangouts too.
This format of interviewing other people or presenting face-to-face is extremely powerful because of the ability to create relationships with people. As we have repeatedly said in our interviews and also inside the product – it’s the ability to quickly establish the ‘know like and trust’ factor that makes this format a winner.
When you combine that power with the ability to quickly and easily rank your videos so that you get viewers, it immediately becomes the primary way to create content that converts in our opinion. That’s why you should pick up a copy of The Hangout Cash Code here.
In fact, after listening to Chris and I, Mike Thomas is swapping over to Google Hangouts himself – so that is the ultimate endorsement because he already has a very successful business format and can see the benefit of moving over to Hangouts.
Here is the Hangout Cash Code interview with Mike Thomas aka Mike From Maine:
Yesterday I was interviewed by James Knight & Kristie Chiles about The Hangout Cash Code. You can see the interview below and as you will see they are gracious interviewers.
I was thrilled to meet them as I have bought some of their video products in the past and their training will no doubt have influenced some of the content in The Hangout Cash Code!
They told me that they currently have around 15,000 keen followers in their Facebook Group including myself.
Unfortunately, Chris Cole, my partner, was unable to make the call for personal reasons but this is why having a partner is so useful – they can pick up the slack if needed!
Here is the interview – you will see that James & Kristie major on the affiliate product which we sold through Google Hangouts but the uses of this technology really go much further than that. Chris and I have identified numerous ways to monetise Google Hangouts.
The Hangout Cash Code launches tomorrow (1st August 2014) at 11 a.m. EST or 4 p.m. GMT. But before that we have another interview to do with Mike Thomas aka Mike From Maine.
It was great to meet James Knight and Kristie Chiles about The Hangout Cash Code on their James & Kristie Show and they were so generous with their offers of help that I really feel that we have made some good friends here.
Han Fan (the internet man) is promoting Hangout Cash Code which launches on 1st August 2014 at 3 p.m. EST.
The interview took place at around 2 a.m. in the morning so if Chris Cole and I look a little tired and our mind is wandering from time to time, you know why! Chris is currently holding down a full-time job as well as doing his internet marketing so this was a tough call but this is what it takes to succeed.
Han Fan is a super-affiliate – in other words he makes a large full-time income from promoting other peoples products which is why Chris and I were prepared to go the extra mile for him. If Han Fan is behind us, it guarantees a fast start to our launch and some good EPC’s.
It is worth watching this replay just to see how he operates as an interviewer. Prior to the interview, we received a series of generic questions in a document and this enabled us to think about our responses in advance. Prior to the interview starting, Han Fan also talked about what he wanted to cover and how we would respond to ensure that we were ready.
Don’t forget that this is how he makes his living so whatever you think about the interview just know that this is a successful formula for him. You can then model his success for yourself.
The other important point that I want you to get from this interview is the role that we see Hangouts playing in building our online relationships – this is absolutely critical.
Relationships are critical in business and it is difficult to create online hiding behind our computers – it takes time, consistency, effort and skill so the point that Han Fan makes about the fact that you are dealing with ‘real people’ is well made because it is easy to forget when you are dealing with a hidden audience.
Chris and I can already see that Hangouts will be a major part of our strategy to build the ‘know like and trust’ factor to increase our sales conversions and to improve the lives of our customers. The story I tell about how I started in consulting by leveraging my previous banking relationships is 100% true.
Relationships do not appear in any balance sheet but just know that this is really where the money is, not that I think of relationships in those terms. If you just have a passion to help other people to improve their lives then this is the correct mindset to have.
In order to enable you to do this and expand your sphere of influence, you do need to sustain yourself financially and also to finance the lifestyle you want. So the money is only important from that perspective but ultimately you will only be rewarded to the extent that you find a way to add value to other peoples lives and thereby gaining their trust that you can deliver what they want.
With that said, here’s the interview (and note that he has spelt my name wrong in the video title and description!)
Marketing and branding is enhanced by design skills, so I have been quietly developing my Photoshop skills – particularly using Photoshop Actions to create engaging graphics.
Creating graphics is a very desirable skill in website design and it can be expensive and frustrating to outsource.
My coach advocates that we should outsource of graphics because we need to focus on marketing but in so doing you also lose control of your brand to some extent because it is created by someone else.
To build my skills, I have therefore taken shots with my small digital camera and turned them into works of art. Judging from these pictures, I should probably go into photography because I love it. These are some of my personal favourites.
I hope you enjoy these images of my grandchildren (who are the real blessings in my life, together with the rest of my family!) and local scenes. As you can see, I have a little bit of the artist in me. (The dog picture on my home page, is Poppy, my constant companion and disciple!)
These have nothing to do with marketing but everything to do with developing my graphical skills to enhance my web pages and marketing collateral.
Internet marketing has given me a somewhat eclectic mix of skills and I don’t really know what the bigger picture is. I am just trusting that they will all come together for some greater purpose that I am not yet aware of!
If you click on each image, you should see an enlarged version in your browser.
I’m pitching to a business, CCL Group, which runs a digital forensics course here in Stratford-upon-Avon.
I had the crazy idea that rather than telling them that I knew a little bit about SEO and video marketing, why don’t I just make a 2 minute video and rank it. So this is just a test and not requested by the client.
Note how the red splash image stands out on the page – nice strategy!!
These rankings were achieved without any backlinks. If I had to bid for the keyword ‘digital forensics course’ in Google Adwords, the suggested bid is £6.17 per click and competition is ‘High’.
Here is the video and below it you will see that I was ranking on page one of YouTube for the keyword ‘digital forensics course’ within 1 minute of upload and multiple other related keywords:
(The settings on this video on YouTube have been switched to ‘Private’ so you cannot check it out on YouTube at the moment)
This is the video script that I prepared prior to preparing the video:
Keywords:
Digital forensics course
digital forensics course online
digital forensics training courses
digital forensics syllabus
computer forensics classes
The cost of cyber-crime to the UK is around £27 billion, over a third
of the cost is a result of intellectual property theft.*
Is your business vulnerable to cyber-crime?
IP and data theft are just some of the reasons your company may need a
forensic response. Other issues include:
– computer misuse,
– harassment and bullying,
– internal sabotage,
– breach of policies and
– employee productivity.
FIRST RESPONSE TRAINING
Product Description
When one of these activities affects your company, you need to know
what can be done as part of the investigation, and the correct
procedures to follow.
CCL Group can help; we are the UK’s largest digital forensic provider and
have completed over 55,000 digital forensic cases. Our experience
means that, whether you’re dealing with a formal disciplinary,
investigation or tribunal, we can show you the correct processes to
follow, that will get the evidence you require and ensure that your
evidence will withstand legal scrutiny.
CCL’s First Response training course covers what key personnel need to
know – how digital forensics can help you, what it can be used for, and
the steps to follow.
THE AGENDA IS AS FOLLOWS:
What is digital forensics?
Why I might need a forensic response?
Where data can be retrieved from
Case studies and examples
Forensic requirement warning signs and how to respond
Handling digital evidence
Forensic readiness
Policies
Technology in business
Minimising impact and disruption
When, where and how to book?
To find out our next available dates please contact us on 01789 261200.
For more information or to book online, please click below to book or
email training@cclgroupltd.com
This is an important question because unless you have a good reason to build a database, then nothing will happen. After all, database management is a really mundane and boring task so we need to be highly motivated to do it.
Like many small and mundane tasks, this is really critical to your long-term success.
I want you to imagine that at some time in the future you want to sell your business – it could be just a few years from now or even many years into the future.
What are you going to sell? If you are an online business, you may have some digital products but that is probably not where the true value in your business lies.
You may have systems and processes such as proven sales funnels and membership sites etc but that’s still not where most of the value lies in your business.
Most of the value lies in your customer database and the relationship that you have with that database.
If you have taken the trouble to create a comprehensive database and to nurture a good relationship with that database then you have a ready made revenue source.
In internet marketing, most marketers think that it is sufficient just to build a list and send out emails. However, it is likely that you you know very little about your customers and prospects other than their name and email address and perhaps which products they opted into or bought.
This makes it difficult to build a solid relationship with them.
The only way that you can build a solid relationship with them is by gathering as much data as you can about them i.e. really take a genuine interest in them and find out who they really are.
What if you took all buyers of your products and put them into a CRM system and gathered more information on them such as website, social media profiles, birth date, and so on and reached out to them personally?
In most offline businesses, this kind of data is gathered through a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) but I wonder how many internet marketers consider running such a system? Most of them seek to gather email addresses in huge quantity rather than trying to improve the QUALITY of their relationships by taking a genuine interest in their prospects and customers.
Could this type of approach revolutionise your business – I think it could.
It would certainly differentiate you from most other list builders.
If you did this, you wouldn’t need a large list in order to succeed now would you?
So how could you go about deepening your relationships in this way?
Nowadays, I think that if you could invite your prospects and customers into a Facebook Group, or Google+ community or your social media community, it would give you the opportunity to engage directly with them and gather more information that could personalise your approach.
But you could be more direct by simply asking them or incentivising them to give you the information say through a poll or questionnaire.
Rather than just pure list building and email marketing, perhaps you should also be operating a CRM system alongside?
What if you also adopted this approach when recruiting affiliates? It would make an enormous difference, don’t you think to your success in getting them to mail for you?
Here’s a video by a real estate business that does an excellent job of explaining the value of building your data base in this way and how to do it manually – as internet marketers there is plenty of software available to automate this process. (Whilst this video is dated, it is extremely important to learn the message and then create your own system. You’ll thank me later that you took this advice and did something with it.)
It’s called ‘Build Your Database with Gary Keller’ and it is 28 minutes well spent:
You are going to do something with it, aren’t you? Stop right now and implement this today before you forget about it. And don’t forget to subscribe to my list in the sidebar if you want to stay informed and don’t forget to look me up on Facebook 🙂 because I really want to know more about you!
I really hope you build your database along these lines rather than in the normal ‘scatter-gun’ method – I think you will find this approach much more valuable and Microsoft Outlook (or something similar) has plenty of tools to enable you to set up a simple CRM system of your own until you can afford a system like Infusionsoft.
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!
In view of our impending launch of Hangout Cash Code, I have co-branded the Help Desk with Chris Cole. We have plans to create at least one product per month in partnership and it makes sense to run all support through one help desk.
I am pleased to report that the Sonic Reply plugin was battle-tested during our successful product launch whewr we sold around 550 digital products and received around 20 tickets. Sonic Reply enabled us to keep on top of our customer service response times and to answer the tickets in the order received – it has great analytics that really help us to manage our tickets effectively.
For several weeks now I have been working on a product entitled Hangout Cash Code in partnership with Chris Cole.
At the beginning of the year, I set myself the goal of really mastering Google Hangouts as part of my 2014 business plan. So when Chris Cole approached me to help him to build out Hangout Cash Code, I leapt at the opportunity.
Chris is a fellow coaching student who is talented in a number of areas such as video creation and graphics and he has high product creation standards.
Some of the tutorials within Hangout Cash Code are animated videos made with VideoMakerFX and others are Hangout recordings of trainings made with Mindmaps that cover a particular topic. The front-end product will be an e-book on Hangouts that has yet to written.
Overall, I have enjoyed the process of using Hangouts and working with a partner is very beneficial because it provides a safety net whilst you are still learning. For example, on one of our live webinars I was unable to share my screen so Chris immediately leapt in to rescue me. If you are on your own, you have to somehow work this out on your own which greatly increases the pressure.
Also, having someone as the ‘cameraman’ who controls what the audience sees on their screen is important as is having someone to handle the questions while you are speaking.
The only way to master a technology like Google Hangouts and webinars is through practice until you become confident and comfortable.
By making this product, both Chris and I have gradually realised all the opportunities and possibilities that Google Hangouts can offer any business and we are both excited to be mastering this technology and to be revealing our findings through Hangout Cash Code.
The other benefit that we have gained from creating this product is to experiment with both Webinar Jam and Webinar Ignition – these are two front-end applications for facilitating the running of webinars and the registration process.
To improve the structure and content of my webinars, I am currently going through another training entitled Webinar Expert Academy but this has been hampered by the slow delivery of the training. However, this is the funnel model that I will be implementing in future as a result of this training:
Having experiment with Google Hangouts and Google Hangouts on Air, I can easily foresee that this is going to be one of the main tools in my business going forward.
If you want to see why I am so excited by this technology, then look out for Hangout Cash Code which is due for launch on 1st August 2014. If you join my list, I will keep you informed of the launch details and in the meantime you can read my free report entitled Badass Hangouts to whet your appetite.
Alternatively, you can read my free report called Webinar Riches whilst waiting for Hangout Cash Code to launch.
Business Storyboards is a product that covers the topic of business strategy and planning. This information has been distilled from my experience in banking, consulting and, latterly, internet marketing. It includes a number of high-level business strategy trainings.
To get further details about Business Storyboards click here.
This diagram lays out the basic internet marketing model that applies to all online businesses. There are nuances to this model that will impact on your success but this is the core model.
Nuances could be things like:
creating content in multiple modalities to encourage consumption
exit pop-ups on squeeze and sales pages
viral sharing incentives
use of graphics and design to engage visitors
use of psychology in your copy and offers
positioning
your mindset and goals
the quality of your training
your ability to manage your time effectively to get results
choice of niche and your competition
testimonials and proof of results
quality of the traffic source – for example, warm traffic from affiliates will convert better than cold traffic from advertising or SEO
and many, many more
All my products are designed to teach various aspects of this model because it is impossible to deliver everything within one product. So for example:
the topic of creating amazing graphics is covered by my product called Easy Web Page Graphics
list building and promoting via webinars by the product currently being created with my friend Chris Cole call Hangout Cash Code
the training will all come together under my group coaching programme called Business Creation Mastery
If my explanation of the internet marketing model was valuable to you, please join my community by signing up for one of my free offers in the sidebar or just join my list at the box at the top of my sidebar.
My website was suspended by my hosting company for CPU abuse for 24 hours.
I did have a warning a couple of weeks ago and thought that I had addressed the problem by caching my site and deleting a plugin that was causing problems. It turns out that that plugin was not properly deleted??!!! and was continuing to use resources. This has now been addressed by adding code to the .htaccess file.
I have contacted the plugin crator to inform him of the problems I have experienced – it looks like he has removed this plugin from his current product range.
The really annoying thing about this is that there is no way to monitor CPU usage so I don’t know if the amendments I have made have addressed the problem adequately. I am happy to sort any problem out, if I can understand the root cause.
In my experience, this is just one of the costs of doing business but the timing could not be more embarrassing because my whole business revolves around my website. I now know why it is a good idea to have your own dedicated server but that is relatively expensive. Of course this expense has to be measured against the potential loss of business.
The real problem is that the technicians speak in code – here is an example of just one line of code thrown at me – of course there were at least 100 more lines of code – what do you make of this:
So from this code, I am supposed to work out what is wrong. I’m sure it means something to someone but which business owner has the time or knowledge to decipher this?
My website is somewhat plugin intensive which does not help with CPU usage but I use all the plugins on my site and deactivating some of them will cause problems with my content.
My host recommends that you use only 5 plugins but I am currently using 23!! If the problems continue I may need to prune this number radically but I don’t want to do this if I can avoid it.
These sort of incidents always make you stronger in the long run because they are a learning experience but in the short term they are extremely painful, embarrassing and frustrating.
So much of life is like this when you are growing!
Anyway, if you were trying to access my site within the last 24 hours, I apologise for the fact that my website was suspended. For the time being, normal service has been resumed.
Update
I have been informed of a method for monitoring CPU usage and I’m setting this up now. The only question in my mind, is will I understand the output so I can address any further problems?
I’ve just added the ability to make sketch videos to the video formats that I can create.
Here is the first test video that I made:
This is a very rough and ready test but I think it shows the potential of this format where it is possible to spend a lot of money to get this type of video for promotional purposes.
I will continue to develop my skills with this software in order to use it to its maximum as sketch videos are a popular video format that engages viewers.
