I have decided to offer a membership site service to build high-quality membership sites.
This can be for digital products or training portals for offline businesses who want to have bespoke training programmes for employees.
I am increasingly attracting internet marketers who want some help with the technical part of product creation. I therefore figure that if I can offer a service whereby my customers can concentrate on product creation and I will handle the technical part of product delivery then this could be a useful service to offer. For many people this would cut down the time spent on product development considerably.
The purchase of Instatheme means that I will be working mainly with two themes – Instatheme and the Membersonic Theme. Both of these have a huge variety of styling options as set out on this page. Instatheme includes a built-in visual editor, so the styling of pages without coding skills is easy.
[features_box_light_blue width=”75%” + border=”1px”]By the way, you can learn a lot about brandiing from Lester Lim and Suzanna Theresia who have created the ‘Insta’ suite of products. They have created ‘Instabuilder’, ‘Instamember’ and ‘Instatheme’ – a highly recognisable brand which is built around the theme of ‘membership sites’. This sort of focus really pays off – this is what they are reporting for the Instatheme launch – ‘we have hit 2,600+ sales and grossed $100K + in 48 hours – and we still got 5 solid days to go.'[/features_box_light_blue]
I also own a developers license for WP Courseware so I have the additional capability of turning training content into courses so that tutors can monitor the progress of their students.
From a recent product that I have bought, I have the ability to create a simple sales funnel incorporating a simple squeeze page and then a series of additional offers – these can be own products or affiliate products. It’s as simple as ‘plug ‘n’ play’ and I am going to create a new training product around this concept to enable my students to create multiple themed sales funnels fast.
As I also own a developers licence for membership software, sales letter software, state-of-the-art video player and webinar registration software for Google Hangouts, these can optionally be added into the mix.
Part of my offering is my growing skill in creating stunning graphics – websites are a very visual medium and this is one way of differentiating my product quality.
Using one of the Instatheme templates, I have outlined my membership site service here. I have not included pricing as each one will be bespoke according to the needs of the owner.
Instatheme launches today (6th March 2014 @ 11 a.m. EST or 4 p.m. GMT) and I will be investing in it and offering a bonus.
I have been using Instabeauty, one of the themes packaged with the Instatheme launch, on two of my membership sites – marksalmon.info and businesscreationmastery.com.
There are 8 or 9 design templates now available and each template has an almost infinite number of colour combinations. However, only 4 of the design templates are available in the upfront price – the rest can be purchased separately (- which I will be doing!).
These themes have been designed specifically for membership sites, so they have plenty of navigation options.
This is the first theme that I am aware of to have a visual editor incorporated into the theme. This gives ‘drag and drop’ page design capability without the need for coding.
The theme is responsive so it is mobile friendly, as you would expect from a new theme.
Included within the offer funnel are some nice graphics options but these are optional.
The theme has been created by Suzanna Theresia, who has created Instabuilder and Instamember – both of which I own. You can expect Instatheme to have been well-tested prior to launch.
Here is a quick preview of the various design templates I mentioned above:
If you buy through my link, I will reward you with a very nice bonus. Simply send me a message through my Contact page with the subject line ‘Instatheme Bonus’ and a copy of your Paypal receipt and I will reward you.
I have been waiting for the Instatheme launch for around 12 months now, so I am excited about it – don’t forget to claim your bonus if you buy through my link.
I think we all under-estimate the power of our personal story. Hopefully this article will make you think about how you are using your personal story in your business.
I am currently thinking hard about mine.
My sister is taking speaking lessons from a top speaker called Bo Eason and I discovered the video below which I think you will find fascinating – it’s entitled The Power of Your Personal Story.
He makes the point that we are each our own global brand – we are each completely unique and it’s the only completely unique brand that most of us own and it can’t be replicated by anyone else.
It’s then a question as to what extent we can touch other people with our story and how many people we can reach with our story.
Watch closely how Bo uses his whole body to express himself to tell his story.
He also makes the point that our job as entrepreneurs is an expression of who we are and if we tell our story correctly our clients will get caught up in the whirlwind which is our dream for our business.
People want YOUR story because that’s the best story we have, it’s our biggest asset and it is ours and ours alone.
You may be thinking that you don’t have a good story to tell, but Bo Eason easily deals with that objection in the video , so it is well worth watching – observe closely because this guy is charging wads of money as a speaking consultant (- my sister is paying $15,000 for a 3-day group consultation to perfect her 3 minute personal story -) and you are getting this for free!
(Note – the video starts slowly but stay with it and you will be rewarded – just after 4 minutes it really gets going.)
If you get this, you will have the power to affect others with the delight you take in yourself! That’s the power of our personal story…
N.B. Coincidence – at 17:31, the blonde lady sitting to the right of the bloke speaking (as you look at the video) is Ann Sieg. It was her training that started me off in internet marketing. A very classy lady and an excellent marketer who mainly trains network marketers.
I have been exploring Photoshop Actions recently and, because I share what I am doing to build my business, I thought that I would share this with you.
Part of the reason for playing around with Photoshop is that I am creating a product called Easy Web Page Graphics sharing what I know about how to create graphics.
I am mostly self-taught. I started out with Macromedia Fireworks which was bundled with an old purchase of Dreamweaver. I find that Fireworks is now relatively simple to use and I use it a lot for simple graphic creation for that reason.
However, some time ago I managed to get a free copy of Photoshop CS5 (which I have since upgraded to CS6). I was buying products that had Photoshop Actions as part of the purchase and was curious about how to use these. With a little bit of experimentation, I soon found that Photoshop Actions make graphic creation very easy.
Recently I discovered a site called GrahicRiver.net that sells loads of Photoshop Actions for very cheap prices and I have been buying a few of these to take my graphical skills to the next level.
Recently Brad Gosse was offering some free stock ‘spicy’ photos. Whilst these do not really have a place in my internet marketing business, I thought that I would share some of the stunning results.
I think that design excellence when presenting your website, content and products is extremely important and I am hoping to take my graphical skills and turn my content into works of art. This combined with green screen video where I can use images as video backgrounds will make for some interesting results. I can also use nice images for squeeze page backgrounds, headers, banners etc.
These sketches have been created from ordinary photographs – some are cropped and others have been touched up. I just wanted to show you what is possible with Photoshop Actions.
As you can see I love creating digital art. For many years, I think I have buried my creativity because my employment (banking and consulting) has really been more about logic than art.
I remember writing an essay at school about an apocalyptic, post-war scenario. The creative process was extremely hard work and I think I frightened myself by my creative potential. I gained outstanding top marks for the work but I never again exercised my creativity to the same extent.
Only during the last year or two, with my websites and now with my graphic creation, I am I now re-finding the creativity that at one time scared me into almost a lifetime of burying the creative muse. I find that this is the kind of work I would like to do but I wonder if I can make a living from it?
Anyway, I love exploring Photoshop Actions – please comment below if you have any ideas on how I can make money from this!
Update:
I am finding the images I have created with Photoshop Actions super-useful for my web design business. When I have a free few moments, i create more designs that I hold in readiness for use on future projects to set my work apart.
They are also useful for eCovers, banners, headers and general website images or even to drive traffic from Pinterest or Facebook. If you want to know how I am doing it, then you may want to pick up a copy of Easy Web Page Grapghics. This product could set your design business alight with the possibilities and tools I reveal.
Last Sunday, I had an online consultation with Tsahai de Silva who is based in Trinidad.
The purpose of the consultation was to build her membership site as she had created most of her content.
Tsahai had already outsourced her graphics and sales page and they both look great.
Using my developers licence for the Membersonic Theme, this is how the site now looks:
I am really pleased with how this site has turned out. As you can see, Tsahai is using a ‘pen’ name for this product – Robert Black – and the product is called Affiliate Income Boost.
I’ve added one of my products into the site as a Bonus, to help Tsahai to offer an awesome product. As you can see we are delivering the videos using Easy Video Suite in a playlist and during the consultation we created a sexy video splash image.
In the course of my consultation, I showed Tsahai how to store and deliver products from Amazon S3 and how to create ecovers with Photoshop actions so it was quite a wide-ranging consultation. I did have difficulty resizing the header image to fit the site but I got there in the end.
This article will cover the thorny topic of how to be more productive online.
The barriers to productivity are many:
facebook
internet browsing
email
online chat
domestic interruptions
telephone calls
I’ve discovered that after an interruption it can take on average at least 15 minutes to get back into the flow of working, sometimes longer.
Also, often internet marketing requires that you need to follow a process, sometimes quite convoluted if, for example, you are building a new website or a sales funnel.
This therefore means that you can potentially lose your place in the process or leave the process unfinished if you forget where you were entirely. My computer is littered with unfinished projects simply because that when I returned to my computer I have forgotten what I was doing in the last session!
The problem above illustrates why systemisation is so important – if you are implementing a system it should be easy to know how much of the system has been implemented and how much you have left to implement. If possible, lay your system out in the form of a check-list and tick off each step as you complete it.
In the course of my consulting, I have also discovered several other major barriers to being productive online:
slow broadband speed is potentially deadly. Internet marketing often requires that you upload and download files frequently. Some of these files can be large like, for example, videos. This means that you can waste a lot of time waiting for files to upload and download, during which time you can also be distracted. This is a major productivity killer and, in my opinion. You should invest in the fastest broadband speed available. (When I moved house 3 years ago, having access to fast broadband was a major consideration forb me in the buying process!)
I’ve also come across internet marketers that have no proper filing structure on their computer. Files are littered over their desktop and they have no proper filing system and therefore lose a lot of the information on their computer or struggle to access it. This too is a major productivity barrier – lesson 101 in internet marketing is to take time to file everything in a properly structured filing system on your computer.
Also, make sure that you back up all your computer files and have access to the programme software. You never know when disaster can strike:
house fire
hard disc corrupts
computer theft
flooding
computer virus
hackers
It is absolutely essential that you have back-up copies of everything so that you do not lose any of your hard work and you can restore your programmes and information as quickly as possible. I use Carbonite.com to keep an automated real-time backup of all my files on a remote server i.e. away from my property as I have literally years of work and effort stored on my computer
another potential area of lost productivity is not using the right tool for the job.
When I first got married, we had a sloping back garden and I tried to cut our lawn with a hand-pushed lawn mower – it was extremely hard work and I did not look forward to the weekly struggle. Subsequently I bought a motor mower and the job became quick, easy and satisfying to do – to this day I like to mow my lawn. The lesson that I learnt that there is often a tool for every job that makes it comparatively easy – this is especially true in internet marketing. Find out what the big boys in internet marketing are using (take care, this may not always be the same tools that they are selling or recommending for money). For example, you can often ‘right click’ on a web page and view the source code to see what WordPress theme and plugins they are using. Don’t be ‘cheap’ about acquiring the right tools, potentially they will make you far more productive and time is money. An example of this, is using Photoshop Actions to make ecovers and graphics – this will save you so much time and money that the large outlay up front to buy the programme can quickly be recouped within your business. Another example is using Easy Video Suite to make and present your videos – a fantastic tool that I would not like to be without. Take care, however, each tool that you use in your business has a learning curve attached to it – select your tools carefully, learn how to use them, and create systems for them so that you can outsource work when the time is appropriate to do so. Your tools are your productivity weapons – keep them up-to-date and learn how to use them with dexterity to produce elegant and sophisticated work. For example, Camtasia, when wielded by a video-jedi, can help you to produce outstanding video works-of-art.
Time management is also critical but what does that mean? To me, it means that you plan your work and work your plan. It also means that you plan to take regular breaks to rest your eyes and stretch your muscles. One method that works well is to chunk your time down into smaller chunks.
A year is broken down into quarters, quarters into months, months into weeks, weeks into days and days into hours. This enables us to work to an overall framework that achieves an annualised goal. When planning my day, I like to chunk my time down into hours and work through my prioritised tasks for the day. Planning is all about adapting good habits – here are some that you might want to consider:
in the days between Christmas and the New Year, plan your next 12 months – the detail may be a bit sketchy but you will try to plan an overall framework which moves you closer to your long-term goal
I then plan the next quarter in more detail by breaking it down into months and weeks. At the end of each quarter and month and week take the opportunity to review progress and adjust your forward plans as necessary.
On a Sunday evening plan your week ahead
Each evening, before you finish work, plan your activities for the following day
each morning, fire up a programme like Action Enforcer and break your day down into hourly chunks including breaks.
Parkinsons Law says that work will always fill the time available so that if we plan to take a day to complete a task it will fill a day even though if we set a deadline of one hour we could achieve the same result. Setting deadlines is therefore an important strategy for increasing productivity. I like to use a tool like Action Enforcer to break down my tasks into hourly chunks and at the same time set deadlines to achieve them – if you do this, you will be surprised by the amount of work you will get done.
At the beginning of this article, I outlined a number of potential time stealers like Facebook, email etc. Knowing that these are time-stealers, you also need to adopt habits that deal with these problems i.e. only look at Facebook and emails at certain points in the day, turn off chat during working hours, turn off your phone and pass calls to answerphone whilst working if possible or educate staff and customers to only contact you at certain alloted times in the day – they have no automatic right to break your concentration and workflow. Plan to eliminate all interruptions as far as possible.
A free tool that can help you to track how much time you are spending productively online is ‘Rescue Time’. This tool maps how much time you spend on each website and you can determine which sites were ‘business’ related and which were personal or trivial sites that effectively wasted your time. You cannot avoid you lack of productivity if every minute is accounted for re-presented to your graphically!
I also want to emphasise the importance of working to a framework rather than in piecemeal chunks. If we take writing a book as an example, the book is the framework. We break the book down into chapters and the chapters into sub-headings or topics that fit into our overall plan to deliver either a story or a result.
The same is true of anything we do in internet marketing – we need to ensure that all our actions fit into an overall framework that delivers a result rather than being piecemeal or random in nature. The power of working in this way is that everything builds on each other to deliver an awesome result to our customer. When delivering any of our work to any customer, it is important to explain how this piece of work fits into the overall framework that we have planned to deliver although each piece of work also delivers a particular result in and of itself. For example, our product may be all about list building but may not cover email marketing or affiliate marketing strategies. These may be additional products that will be delivered within an overall framework of products that you are planning.
I have seen plenty of marketers that deliver products within a sub-segment of each niche. For example, they produce mainly Facebook products, YouTube products, Webinar products or SEO products – this is more productive because they can focus, go deep and sell more related products to their existing customers. Compare this to someone who is trying to be all things to all men and you will see how effective this is when you can focus your point of attack – it works well on the battlefield too! You also see this with many book authors – they become known as a crime writer or romance or historical biographies – it just makes more producive sense to narrow your point of focus and expertise and become known for something that you are particularly good at or knowledgeable about.
Within any business there are always points of leverage i.e. 20% of actions that produce 80% of results. If you can identify these and work mainly in these areas then your productivity can increase massively It is important to take some time to identify what these things are – for me, they are things like:
Traffic generation
Product creation
Email marketing
Systemisation
Measure and monitoring key performance indicators
Planning
Copywriting
Outsourcing work that has been systemised or where I need to acquire skills.
These are all areas where I can increase my productivity and the financial return on my time.
The one thing that none of us can create more of is time – time is short. I can say this from the perspective of being in my mid-fifties and wondering how the time has passed so quickly. It is therefore important to make every day count towards an overall lifetime of achievement and contribution.
I often hear of people flitting from job to job – this is not really the best way to be productive unless this is part of an overall plan to acquire skills towards some lifetime goal like starting a business. My working career has been dedicated to helping other people to start and grow their own business, in the course of which I have created my own businesses to hone my understanding and skills. I’m still learning new things every day and my skills and knowledge would have much less power if I suddenly decided to pursue a career in say the health sector. My productivity would go through the floor for an extended period of time until I had acquired new skills, training and experience in my new role.
So there is a lot to be said for ‘sticking to your last’ which makes it all the more important that you choose wisely to start with so that you can stay the course. I’ve tried to advise my children to pursue a passion or interest in their career because I truly believe that they will be far more productive by doing something that they really enjoy.
I hope this article has given you some ideas on how to be more productive online and that you will subscribe to my blog in the sidebar to receive more great tips and information.
In this video I outline a source of free graphics that you may have overlooked.
In fact it is a completely authentic and engaging source of graphics that will be great for your personal branding. It is easy to build up a nice library of graphics that you can use in future projects and they will be free of copyright or royalty restrictions – indeed, you own the copyright!
Are you ready for me to reveal this source? Then watch this video:
Now that you have your free graphics, you can take them to one of the graphical editors and make variations of your images. For example:
You can create photo distortions on PicHacks.com or your iPad:
You can create sketches, like this one of my grandson. I will cover how to do this in another video (- subscribe if you want to find out how!):
You can combine pictures:
Here’s another great tip for getting free images from video (-this one has my new video intro and outro):
Here’s an image clipped from this video with Snagit:
The possibilities are almost endless.As I said, this may be a source of free graphics that you had previously overlooked… but not anymore!
Leave a comment and let me know what you think about these tips!
I’ve been watching my online friends, Chris Cole and Matthew Houghton, creating incredible videos and have been wondering how they did it.
(If you want to join in the magic then this is the Facebook Group that you need to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/580398582047648/ and I recommend that you subscribe to Chris Cole’s YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/imchriscole and you will be impressed by the great information he is just giving away about video marketing and YouTube)
I therefore invested in a studio background cloth and stand. This was a partial fail for two reasons:
I had inadequate lighting
I had a white background that was difficult to remove effectively in my video editing software
I therefore bought a couple of studio lights off eBay. I discovered why they were so cheap – just one bulb in each! However, as I am filming in my small office, I think I will get away with this. However, my friends have much more powerful lighting – 4 bulbs in each which enables them to use a bigger space for filming.
Despite the new lighting, the white background was still not working, so I invested in a green background cloth.
This time, I had success – here is my first test. This is not perfect by any means but it does represent a break-through for me. Hopefully, I will now be able to go on and raise my game.
I have also created a new video outro that I will start to use on my videos – the creative options are enormous with video – feeling excited:
Green screen video may not be a new frontier for you, but it is for me!
There are many skills required to be successful in internet marketing so it is difficult to pick just one.
Some of the skills required include:
building websites and web pages
list building
email marketing
creating sales funnels
copywriting
traffic generation
monitoring and testing
graphics
content creation
to name but a few!
However, in order to get rich online, you can have all those skills but there is one core skill that you need above all others in order to be rich. Most of the skills above can be outsourced fairly easily but there is one aspect that really differentiates the successful online marketer above all others, I believe.
You can find out what I believe is the #1 skill for online success (and why) if you optin here.
Have you got what it takes to make it in sales or in business? This video clip pretty much tells you how it is and the sales mindset required for success.
The 5 minute message is – give up now if you haven’t got what it takes and go and get a job.
As Frank Kern says: ‘Stop being a pussy!’
The section from 18:20 to 23:05 is one of the best responses to the question “Is this guaranteed to work?” And that section is also the most inspiring and motivating “sales speech” I’ve ever heard.
Subscribe to my site if you want more information like this!
I listen to Dennis Becker. He’s someone that I can relate to.
He struggled for many years to make an income online. He finally made a breakthrough by successfully promoting the Xbox with Google Adwords and has not looked back.
Now he runs a membership site called Earn1KADay. It is just about the only recurring membership that I currently subscribe to (and have done now for several years).
It has withstood the test of time! That’s because it offers massive value.
The site encompasses a community of internet marketers and includes:
several discussion forums
a lot of PLR and Resell products
a lot of coaching and advice
Dennis Becker is a really solid, honest, no-hype kind of guy. He doesn’t have the fast-talking, sales delivery of some marketers but he is nevertheless a very astute marketer who has created a lot of products.
I also use many of the Earn 1KAday PLR products in my business including some very nice graphic templates.
I think there are now over 1,000 products in the Earn1KaDay download area – some are for personal use only.
More are made available every month because Dennis reinvests part of his income into new products.
However, be under no illusion, Earn1KAday represents a massive investment in your own education and gives you instant access to a lot of products that you can rebrand and sell yourself, as well as vital training information and help from the forum members.
Earn1KaDay gives you the capability of taking massive action in your business by giving access to the resources to make it possible.
It is one of my secrets for product creation – a lot of my product bonuses are products that I have obtained through Earn1KaDay.
Within Earn1KADay, Dennis has started a coaching programme which is included as part of your membership and this is one of the first videos which gives really solid advice about what internet marketing is all about and what it takes to be successful:
What’s It All About?
If you like what you hear and are considering whether or not to join Earn1KADay, then click on this link. I have been a paying member for at least 2 or 3 years and it carries my highest recommendation.
If you start with the monthly payment option, then you can see what is available before considering the lifetime membership option.
If you listen to Dennis Becker and follow his advice, then you won’t go too far wrong in my opinion.
I like playing with logo design concepts and I have just bought a package that enables me to play around with any logo to create different logo designs.
Using Photoshop actions, it is easy to get some stunning logo effects and to create something quite sophisticated.
I have basically created a number of logo concepts below to see which one I like best and I thought that I would share my tests with you.
Which one do you like best – feel free to give your opinion below and tell me which one you like and why.
I thought that I would carry out a short clients sites review to showcase some of my work.
It is interesting for me to reflect on my previous work and, ironically, building clients sites is not my core business!
I spend most of my time creating my own digital products and these are projects that have simply come my way through word-of-mouth.
Here are a selection of Clients Sites that I have recently worked on (in addition to building my own digital products):
This site has been set up to advertise Homestays around the world. It is based upon the Classipress Theme which is a bit involved to set up. Initially the owner is offering free advertising but it also has the capability of offering paid advertising. Entry to the site is through a squeeze page. Just needs some more listings in order to take off.
This is a small offline business offering landscaping services to businesses in the Thames Valley Area. It has a walk on video on the home page, a gallery and a video promo. This was built to a budget but the owner seems very pleased with it. You can view it at BusinessGardens.com.
Simple Pinterest Traffic Systems is a membership site product. The site infrastructure was created in about one hour including installation of WordPress, deployment of the membership script and page creation and site configuration. The owner of the site is also using my developers license of Easy Video Suite so that his video tutorials literally roll onto the page!
Wake Up To Health is a health-related website that is literally groaning with features including:
Blog
Ecommerce shop
Members Area
Podcasting software
High-end video player
Live and automated webinars streamed direct from the site
It is mobile responsive
A marketing power-house – it is still under construction at the time of writing. The owner is now adding content.
Jumpstart4Youth is a charity website that is built on a premium theme. I struggled with poor quality graphics but overall it is a vast improvement on their previous site. It has a wizzy slider on the front page. This organisation does great community work in the Coventry area.
I met Emma Breeze through Rotary – got her started with her new website Embody Dance (built on the Thesis theme) and her business has gone from zero to being a huge success. She runs dance classes in the Nuneaton area. Just shows what youthful energy and drive can achieve. Very proud of her. I support her but she is creating most of the content herself now.
When I look at these sites, they are pretty diverse in nature but that’s what makes life interesting. However, I would probably make more money by specialising in a niche.
Overall I prefer to create my own websites for my own products because I find interruptions from clients with trivial queries often disrupts my workflow but I’m afraid that goes with the territory!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this clients sites review!
Not only have I been helping Mark Steer with his Pinterest product but I also helped Carl Picot to get over one or two glitches in setting up his product, which is a series of copywriting interviews.
Carl was having some problems in sorting out how his theme worked and we got him over the hump on this in 15 or 20 minutes, including sorting out the navigation. He was kind enough to say this:
I have also been help my sister, Saira, format (the copy isn’t mine!) her new weight-loss product – in particular to format her sales letter:
Yesterday I created a whole new audio product entitled ‘Business By The Numbers’.
I basically created a mindmap with the major sub-headings that I wanted to cover. I then put around 10 points under each sub-topic. I then opened up Audacity and started talking.
It was an easy product to create because it was based upon my own financial expertise gathered over 25 years in banking and more than 12 years in consulting.
On Saturday morning, I have scheduled a consultation with my friend and colleague Tsahai but I don’t know yet what she needs help with.
It will be interesting to see how she is progressing because Tsahai had to return to work to enable her to pay the bills. She has been very supportive to me and lifted me up when I was feeling down at one stage.
I am really hoping that I can help her because I want to see her keep moving forward with internet marketing so that one day she can leave her job.
This is an interim report on the Mark Steer Product Creation Consultation which was covered in a previous blog post.
Progress is being made, albeit slowly.
Mark has got bogged down in unnecessary detail and I therefore held another 0ne hour consultation with him during which we built out his entire Membership site (from fresh WordPress installation), including all the membership pages.
Mark has already created his eBook and has now added it to the page but I had to help him to improve the eBook cover so that it is presented nicely.
This eBook has simply been uploaded to his host server rather than to Amazon S3, but one step at a time is necessary.
Two Pinterest-related bonuses have been added by me to his Bonuses page so he doesn’t have to worry about that.
Mark wasted a lot of time in fiddling with his website header, making 11 changes to it, until I stepped in and sorted it out within 5 minutes.
The learning point here is not to waste time on things like this when someone else will do it for you for $5 on Fiverr!
As I said to Mark, your customers will not buy your banner from you – it is not adding value to the core information he is selling. (I do understand that he is trying to present his product nicely but in striving for perfection he is not working on his core content i.e. his videos which are the real value in the product.)
That brings me onto the fact that I have now given Mark just over 24 hours in which to create his 6 videos, because he has wasted so much time on unimportant matters. He has not focused on his product creation so we have now agreed a tight deadline. (I have told him that he must not strive for perfection but to get it done because he can go back later and improve it if he wants to.)
His mind is still playing games, trying to slow him up. I have demonstrated how easy it is to create a Screencast video, so he has no excuses.
Once he has his videos, he can strip the audio files from them if he wishes to create another modality for his content.
He also needs to finish off these details:
create a short video for the Dashboard page – do this last so you can tie up any loose ends for members
decide on which affiliate platform he wants to use and to create his affiliates page (Earn Money)
He has a Mastermind page – I don’t know what this is – coaching or Facebook Group I expect – this needs to be created.
He needs to add resources to his Resources page
Also a contact form or Help-desk to his Support page
Fine-tune the settings on his membership plugin and integrate with his autoresponder.
He needs to add the sales page (outsourced) and payment button.
We will hold the final consultation on Thursday to tie up these loose ends PROVIDED Mark gets the videos done by close of business tomorrow night.
The pressure is now on him and the ‘jury is definitely out’ on this one but, as he is accountable to me for taking action, I still have high hopes that he will do it!
It’s now crunch-time for him.
His mind will be playing tricks on him, trying to slow him up but the reality is that he has everything he needs to get this product done in time for his consultation with Marc Milburn on Friday.
Don’t do what Beyonce advocates and ‘put a ring on it’, Put A Number On It!
I’ve been a long-term member of 6-in-6 Coaching, which is owned and operated by Jason Fladlien & Wilson Mattos of Rapid Crush.
Originally, I paid for 12 fortnightly coaching sessions and we are now up to Session 67 – see below for the topics that have been covered so far:
As you can see, that is a huge over-delivery on their original promise and, as a founding member, I have been very happy with the training that has been delivered.
And it’s not finished yet!
But that’s not the purpose of this post.
Back to Basics
Session 1 is called ‘The Basics’ and that is what I want to talk about because, after 67 sessions, I have recently decided to implement what was covered in Session 1!
I know that sounds crazy but I tried to implement it originally and got distracted by more bright shiny objects.
My intentions were good but somewhere along the way I went astray again. And I think I can now see why.
Some 33 months (almost 3 years) after we first started, I’ve gone back to basics and this time it’s working for me.
Let me explain.
In Session 1, Wilson Mattos did a number of things but three stand out:
he made us go through all our outgoings and ditch all but the essential expenses. For most of us that saving alone paid for the whole coaching.
he assigned each of us accountability partners
the other outstanding thing he did was to explain how they had built their 4.5 million turnover business with a simple planning system.
It’s so simple that I failed to put it into practice and I’ll tell you why in a moment.
Their planning system is simply this:
Step #1 – Set Goals
You need to set clear, achievable and measurable income goals.
In other words you MUST PUT A NUMBER ON IT.
Set your income goal for the month NOW.
If they are making $4.5m a year, their figure will no doubt be a lot higher than yours because they have grown their business steadily to this level over the past 3 or 4 years.
Don’t forget that it must be ‘achievable’ in your mind and slightly challenging.
Don’t move forward from here until you have that figure firmly fixed in your mind – remember, it must be:
CLEAR
ACHIEVABLE
MEASURABLE
Step #2 – Plan
Having first set your goal, you must now create a plan that is time-based, realistic, practical and measurable.
This is the difficult bit. (Or at least it was for me.)
This is where the rubber hits the road because you must now work out HOW you are going to achieve your target!
If you have not been earning much online until now, this is challenging.
So what you need to do is:
break your goal down into daily (or weekly) amounts
now ask yourself what you can do to earn the amount you have set yourself each day/week – list those out on a piece of paper. (Do not let yourself off the hook or let your mind wander off when doing this – this is the serious bit!)
create a planning sheet with headings and fill in your target amount and the activity you WILL do to achieve that target for each day of the month – here are the headings: Day | Target Amount | Activity
make sure that you also plan for breaks
Review and evaluate your plan i.e. go back and forth between Step 1 and Step 2 to adjust your goal and your plan until it is:
REALISTIC
IT ACHIEVES YOUR GOAL
IT IS TIME-BASED
IT IS MEASURABLE
Step #3 – Execute the Plan
Now you need to EXECUTE the plan.
I’ve found that it is important to keep your focus on the target rather than the activity. In other words, I remind myself daily and sometimes several times a day what my goal is and ask myself what I should be doing NOW to get my target.
Often that means doing things that I have to do, rather than what I would like to do. i.e. I find the path of least resistance to getting my goal.
Wilson counselled us not to be too proud to make money.
If the easiest way to make some money is write a few articles for someone else then do what you have to do.
It might be that you put something up for sale on eBay. Just do what you have to do.
This is the way to create a mindset of taking action deliberately to earn money.
It teaches you to honour your own time and to put a value on it.
In practice, I’ve found that the money doesn’t always come from where you expect it to!
But it does come, almost magically, if you focus on your target and work to achieve it. (Yes, it does take work!)
Step #4 – Measure
It is important to continuously evaluate your results based on the goals that you set for your business.
At a minimum it should be weekly but initially it would be advisable to check your progress daily.
If you are falling behind, you need to think of a way (or ways) to catch up.
If you do this properly, Wilson says that they have never not made their target. And their targets are huge.
In the short time that I have been implementing this system, that’s been the case for me too.
It’s really about focus – focusing on your target and constantly asking yourself what you can do to get it.
Step #5 – Growing Your Business
In order to grow your business, rather than just make money online, you also need to develop and document systems.
You can grow your business by outsourcing the systemised parts of your business so you can repeat the entire process by systemising other parts of your business with new systems.
Wilson said that perfection does not exist – set a deadline and just get it done and put your work out there.
It is also very important to celebrate your successes because you need a break sometimes.
Final Words
I’ve discovered that, by implementing this system, I have started hitting my income targets at long last.
My focus has shifted to hitting my targets.
If you will only have the focus and discipline to put this simple system into practice, I think you will start seeing success too.
You may have to make yourself do it initially (it’s simple but not easy) and, once you start seeing that it works, that should motivate you to keep going.
Who knows, you might also build a million dollar business empire too!
I expect that you’ve heard this quote ‘Fail Fast, Fail Often’!
I had a consulting call with Mark Steer, one of my fellow students in Online Wealth Blueprint after I offered a free consultation on Facebook.
I spoke to Mark on Skype for about one hour.
His problem was that he has been working on a product since September which he is planning to launch next March. Today is January 22nd 2014.
Mark’s product is about how to drive free traffic using Pinterest.
I can certainly empathise with Mark – getting your first product out onto the market is difficult. It took me at least 4 months to create WP Website Wizard.
I know of other members in our student group who have been labouring away for 15 months on their product and it has still not been launched.
Here are the barriers in their mind (- I know because I experienced them):
technical – things like how do I set up a members area? What theme should I use? I want transitions in my Powerpoint to make it look fancy. How do I record screencast videos? Where do I upload hem to?
mindset – I want it to be perfect. It’s not good enough yet. Fear of putting your stuff out there and receiving criticism. Fear of the unknown – what will people think, reputation, failing etc
The problem with all this ‘noise’ in your head is that the intrinsic value of the information being offered and consumed will not change all that much by adding all this fluff to your product.
Whilst you are messing around with all this stuff, you are not improving the lives of your potential customers who may need your information TODAY rather than in 3 or 6 months time when you have added in some fancy Powerpoint transitions.
Making money is about an exchange of value – at the moment Mark has nothing to exchange for money. As Marlon Sanders said, ‘half done, ain’t done!’
Also, if you spend 6 (or even 12 months) creating your product you have a significant portion of your life wrapped up in that product. If it flops, think how devastating that would be to you. All that time and money for little or no return.
In the worst case scenario, it could even make Mark throw in the towel.
So when I could see that Mark was in the process of possibly repeating the mistakes that I had made, I was anxious to bring forward his deadline for getting out version 1.0 of the product.
We’ve agreed on a period of 10 days i.e. a week on Friday (today is Wednesday).
Mark also has another coaching call with Marc Milburn scheduled for a week on Friday – I figured that it would be useful if both parties had something tangible to work on improving.
Frankly, he could get his product out today if he was familiar with the process.
But I wanted him to get familiar with the process of producing a product without putting him into a state of panic.
I want him to see how easy this can be.
We’ve discussed what needs to be done and Mark is reporting back to me on Friday with his progress and to deal with any sticking points in his mind. It is all 90% in his mind (as it was in mine!)
Will it be perfect? – Heck no! Nothing ever is.
Will it be the final version! Heck no – this is version 1.0 – the minimal viable product i.e. the bare bones of a product on which he can stick a payment button.
Version 2.0 might be made if Mark thinks it is worth the effort after testing it first in the marketplace.
This is vitally important because it gets him over the barrier of creating and launching his first product.
This is a huge barrier to get over in internet marketing – it’s a barrier made mainly in the mind.
It can only be removed by taking ACTION.
Once you discover how easy and quick it can be, your next product will be faster (and better) and the next one faster still until you get to be like Sean Mize who planned to launch 150 WSO’s in 2013, came up short with 80 and made $65,000 from WSO’s and a shed load more from his coaching programme.
Jason Fladlien advocates that you should create one problem/one solution products in one sitting.
When you first hear this you cannot believe this is possible.
Once you start creating products, you understand that this is very possible when you are familiar with the process.
The other vital points about getting your products out quickly is:
you can quickly gauge what the appetite is for your product in the market which will help you decide whether it is worth building upon or whether to move onto your next product
you can get feedback from beta testers and reviewers for improvement
you have something tangible to build upon and improve – I constantly add additional stuff to my existing products – if I hadn’t created them yet, I wouldn’t have the opportunity of improving them.
Only by taking action do you find out your strengths and weaknesses and start to make improvements – your first product is likely to be poor in comparison with subsequent products. It took Edison 10,000 attempts to create the light-bulb! It’s a process of testing and failing. Being part of a coaching group reduces the amount of testing and failure but you still need to learn the process.
the more products you have, the easier it is to create powerful sales funnels
So ‘fail fast, fail often’ is vitally important in business.
They say that money loves speed. I think that is true.
I am anticipating that by moving Mark’s deadline forward by more than two months, a lot of barriers will fall down for him in the next 10 days. It will be a steep learning curve for him.
On the other hand it would be tough for him to spend another 2 months on his product only to find out that no one is interested in his product idea.
At least by getting it out there quickly he can let the market decide. If there is a reasonable response then he can work on Version 2.0 with all the bells and whistles like adding nice Powerpoint transitions!
I’ve also offered him some technical short-cuts – I have developers rights to software that could make his journey much easier. I’ve offered this to him if he thinks he needs it.
The reality is that there are plenty of free options as well.
I will report back on how Mark progresses at the end of January. This is an actual person with an actual problem and maybe you can learn from Mark’s journey to creating his first product?
The other big thing that Mark may not realise, is that by consulting with me, he is now accountable to me for taking action. He perhaps doesn’t yet realise how this could really move him forward.
Fail fast, fail often – this is vitally important to remember in business if you really want to find success – they do say success is a 1,000 step process.
I created a new ebook today entitled ‘How to Setup a Warrior Special Offer’.
I created the eBook as a result of launching my product ‘The Way of the Warriors’ as a WSO yesterday.
I had a few problems because it is a long time since I set up a WSO and I didn’t notice my payment button wasn’t working for the first few hours – no wonder the sales were slow in coming!!!
As a result of this experience, and whilst its fresh in my mind, I created this new eBook. If you are looking for a good bed-time read, then this is not for you. It is simply a 7-Step process for launching your WSO with lots of screenshots and tips.
I include an explanation of how I created a simple sales funnel and how I integrated Warrior Plus with Membersonic, my membership plugin.
I will be using this little eBook (only 20 pages or so) as a desktop guide when I create and launch my next WSO.
[testimonial2 author=”Paul Langham” + pic=”http://mark-salmon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Paul-Langham.png”]“Hi Mark, Just to say many thanks for your guide, I read it and put in place what I had missed. Thanks again.”[/testimonial2]
In the past I have been reluctant to launch WSO’s because the process seemed so convoluted but I am hoping that this Ebook will make it much easier to get the process down to a system that is easy to use.
Of course, you could make your life a lot easier by having no funnel and just deliver your product direct from Warrior Plus or a simple download page. In the former case, you are leaving money on the table and in the latter case you are leaving your product unprotected and losing many of the cross-selling and presentational benefits of a membership site.
If you would like your own copy of ‘How To Setup A Warrior Special Offer’ then simply register below to get a free copy:
‘What is your number one burning question?’ This is the question posed by one of the internet gurus on his blog and here is a snapshot of the comments he received back.
If you are looking for a product to create, then here is a list of potential projects for you – they are all real questions from people that need help.
I can answer most of them but which one to start with? Here are my quick answers… I hope they are not too flippant but brevity is required with this many questions!
[content_box_yellow width=”75%”]
Q: How do you overcome procrastination & motivate yourself to do what you need to do for your business? A: I have monthly and daily goals and I prepare a ‘To-Do’ list each night for the next day with my prioritised tasks. These fit into a wider strategic framework.
Q: How about lean product development? A: My product creation process is set out in my product Product Creation Renegade
Q: What do you find is the most successful/reliable way of building a list? A: I have set out my list-building strategies in List Building Renegade
Q: Information overload that’s my main issue now. A: You need clarity on the exact strategy that you need to follow – in reality it is quite simple and is set out in my product The Way of The Warriors
Q: How to avoid the temptation of another shiny object A: Once you have decided that you are now a vendor, rather than a buyer, and you have a clear strategy, then it is important to only buy products that will help you to implement your strategy.
Q: Improving sales funnel conversions A: I have a free eBook called Sales Funnel Supremacy about sales funnels and a product called Measure n Manage about how to set up your management information systems
Q: A really simple explanation of how to create a facebook fan page in step by step portions A: Google it and you will find any number of videos showing you how to do this!
Q: How about how to create a sales page using whichever software you are using at the moment? A: I have 3 ways of producing squeeze pages and sales pages – Optimize Press Theme version 1.0, Instabuilder plugin and Paper Template plugin – they are all different and I use whichever one best fits my task. The most flexible one is Instabuilder. Each theme has tutorials about configuring them.
Q: How to decide what tasks you are going to do to build your online business, and how to plan them out for maximum productivity. A: You need a vision and strategic framework for your business – this is covered in my products The Sky Inside and Business Storyboards
Q: I’d love to hear about how you can forward plan financially when it comes to internet marketing – is it even possible? A: Yes, you can reverse engineer your goals to understand what you need to achieve on a daily basis and then create a plan – this is process covered in Business Storyboards
Q: Everybody needs traffic – perhaps you could advise/show what you consider to be the best way of getting free traffic, and the best source of paid for traffic. A: There is no such thing as ‘free’ traffic – time is money and free traffic methods therefore have a cost attached to them. After you have evaluated the true cost of ‘free’ traffic by assigning a value to your time, I recommend looking at traffic sources such as affiliate recruitment, Facebook Ads, Video Marketing (including promoted YouTube videos) and Webinars using Google Hangouts as good ways of driving traffic. Do what the gurus do (not what they say you should do).
Q: How do you make videos using camtasia and the system requirements? A: This is covered in Product Creation Renegade but Techsmith (the creators of Camtasia) have plenty of free tutorials as well
Q: Finding a profitable niche, thats one more of my problems… A: You want a niche (or preferably a sub-niche) where there are plenty of people looking to solve problems and there are people selling products to solve them – this proves that there is a viable market and there is no reason why you should not at least carve out a segment of the market. If you buy the top products in the mareket and study them you will quickly achieve a high level of expert knowledge in whatever niche you choose.
Q: How to get the best out of oDesk! A: Specify your project in as much detail as possible, get quotes and then pick your freelancer based on the feedback and ranking of the previous business owners who have used their services. Use common sense and tread with care.
Q: How to do screencast videos A: This is covered in a lot of detail in one of the bonuses in Product Creation Renegade . You will be shown all the options for this.
Q: 1.Identifying and producing a product 2. Producing the sales literature 3. Directing the product to the market A: See Product Creation Renegade above!
Q: How to stand out from the crowd? A: Be a prolific and high-quality product creator and market your content widely and with skill
Q: Having set up a website how to stay on the right side of the law ie what polices? A: Model your Disclaimer, Terms and Privacy pages on the top guys in your niche. There is a cookie law in Europe – you can get free ‘cookie’ plugins that will help you to cover this.
Q: How to keep personal details private for contact information i.e not giving home address A: You need to be transparent about who you are if you are selling products online but you could use an accommodation address like a Post Box address if you are worried about this or ideally set up a limited liability company.
Q: How to upload a file so that it can be downloaded (where and how) A: I upload my files Amason S3 and their Cloud – this is fully set out in my product WP Website Wizard together with all my knowledge and tutorials about using WordPress to deliver information and products.
Q: How to set up a Fanpage to link to own website to drive traffic. A: Just make a post in your Fan Page that links to a page or post on your website that makes an offer
Q: I need to learn how build 3 pages #1squeeze page #2 signup page and a way give something away for signing up#3 a landing page or capture page. A: Covered in my product List Building Renegade
Q: Top 10 SIMPLE ways to drive the right traffic to your site A: SEO blog posts, comments on other peoples blogs with link to your site, comments on forums with link in forum signature to your site, youtube videos with link to your site, Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, paid solo ads, Google Hangouts, Facebook posts, Warrior Special Offers.
Q: How to choose the right products to promote e.g. Affiliate products A: I only promote those products that I use and like – it lacks integrity if you promote a product without knowing much about it!
Q: A topic worth covering I think is advising people how to put a plan together. A: This is covered in Business Storyboards
Q: I would really love to know your TOP recommended ‘Must Do’ Marketing Tasks which you do weekly/or on a regular basis in order to move your business on and which also have a direct link towards improving your ‘bottom line’ …. Rather than those ‘housekeeping’ tasks which are a must do but don’t really affect how our business is performing. A: I have 3 core tasks that must be done daily – traffic generation, product/content creation and email marketing.
Q: How to set up a WordPress webpage for a Podcast. Where to find easy plug and play templates? A: I use a plugin called Blubrry Powerpress to play my podcasts with a feed to iTunes but Josh Bartlett of Easy Video Suite is launching a product for podcasting soon (called Audello) that will be well-worth looking at!
Q: I would appreciate if you wrote about how to choose a product that could serve as your freebie for collecting email addresses. A: Your freebie should preferably be a one problem/one solution product addressing a pressing general problem in your chosen niche
Q: What do you think is the best way to start an online business A: The exact strategy is set-out in The Way of the Warriors
Q: How to motivate yourself/myself and do stuff! How do you create good content when your’re in the doldrums A: You need a clear vision of how you want to improve the lives of other people and why this important to you on a personal level – see my product The Sky Inside
Q: I would like you to explain the whole blogging thing. I have set up a blog page on the website mentioned above, but how do I link that to a newsletter and list. And how to create traffic and what should I give it for free ? A: This question is a bit muddled but List Building Renegade would help to answer this question
Q: I think the biggest problem would be procrastination and focus A: Covered in detail by 2 eBooks in The Sky Inside product
Q: I have read that software is one of the best things to be in but how do you determine what is needed and be a good seller. A: Covered by an ebook written by a 7-figure marketer – one of the bonuses in Product Creation Renegade!
Q: Personally speaking I’d to know more on how to set a website up. A: I created WP Website Wizard to address this specific question!
Q: Seeing that we’re just past the first week of 2014, I’d be interested in hearing what sort of planning process you go through at the beginning of the year. How do you go about assessing what you’ve accomplished in the previous year, determining what your goals are for the upcoming year, and figure out how you’re going to accomplish them (and anything else that’s part of your planning process)? A: See Business Storyboards and one of the earlier posts on this blog
Q: I’d like to see a review of membership plugins for WordPress, particularly those that have it all: membership, affiliate program, shopping cart, A: I stand by the Membersonic plugin – this is covered by my product Membership Millionaires Bootcamp
Q: I need to know how best to set up a file to be downloaded by customers. I’ve tried one or two WordPress plugins and I cannot fathom how to use them properly. I’ve also signed up for Amazon S3 where I’m also struggling to know what to do. A: This is covered in WP Website Wizard
Q: How to stay motivated when things just don’t happen A: Get support from my colleagues online – they understand what you are going through and are often very supportive.
Q: I think I would like here you explain how to add pages to your website and talk about some tip on writing a BIO. A: See WP Website Wizard
Q: I would like to see a step by step tutorial on creating videos using camtasia. A: Answered above!
Q: Also tips on overcoming lack of self confidence in business which leads to procrastination and feelings of fear. A: This is all about having the right mindset – covered in The Sky Inside
Q: Can you please post a list of recommended reading? I’d love to know what’s on your bookshelf that you’ve really got lots out of when it comes to implementing into your business strategy.A: I will address this in a future post.
Q: I’d be surprised if there weren’t quite a few others who’d like to know more about developing software, in particular the research side and briefing developers. A: There is a great product called Plugin Creation Blueprint that covers this in massive detail.
Q: For me it would be choosing a WordPress theme, what to look for etc. A: It is important to get a premium Theme with a nice design and well-supported in my opinion – Optimize Press, themes by Studio Press and Woo themes fit this bill. Alternatively, try Themeforest.net and buy one of the popular themes there. For membership sites I favour the Membersonic Theme because it is flexible with plenty of navigation options amongst its features – it was built with membership sites in mind.
A: Personally I want to see more of: – how to add a product on clickbank (set up affiliate with member plugin) – How to specificly get in contact with influential people (joint venture) A: Covered by tutorials in MarkSalmon.info
[/content_box_yellow]
And your number one burning question is? Please comment below and let me know yours!
In this video, I show you an Aweber List Maintainance tip to keep the amount that you pay for your Aweber subscription to a minimum.
I show you how to delete ‘Unsubscribes’ and ‘Undeliverable’ email addresses from your lists so that you do not pay more than you need to for your autoresponder subscription. This is particularly appropriate if you are approaching the pricing break-points of 500 subscribers, 2,500 subscribers and so on.
The graphic below shows you Aweber pricing which they do their best to hide (- the pricing matrix is difficult to interpret in my opinion and they hide their tariffs beneath a drop-down tab)!!
As you can see, if your subscribers go over 500 then the price rises from $19 per month to $29 per month, and it rises again to $49 per month once you have over 2,500 subscribers and so on:
Aweber list maintenance should be scheduled for every month or quarter to ensure that you keep a tidy and up-to-date list of your prospects and buyers.
It’s the weekend, so I did a bit of playing around with badges on Photoshop. From a branding point of view it is always nice to have a few graphics in the locker.
I believe graphics play an important part in creating attractive and appealing marketing collateral. Many coaches advocate that you should outsource your graphics to a graphic designer.
If you have little or no aesthetic taste, then this advice is sound but I do not like to put my branding and graphics into the hands of someone else who may have a very different interpretation of what your branding should be.
Plus, I would find it very frustrating to have to wait several days to get my graphics back from a designer.
That’s why I have gradually taught myself to handle my own graphics – like anything else it can easily be learned and there are plenty of free courses online – for example, you can get free courses at http://udemy.com on Photoshop.
To take the hard work out of creating graphics you can buy templates from a graphic designer for just a few dollars and then configure them for your own brand. It took me about 20 minutes to create the badges below.
Why not leave a comment below and let me know which one you prefer? Who knows, I might get you playing around with badges on Photoshop if you like what you see?
In my last blog post, I mentioned that I was creating a WordPress Marketing System for my sister who is a health consultant called Wake Up To Health.
This overview video sets gives you an idea of what I have created for her. I have created additional videos showing her how to get started with each part of the system.
It is my intention to sell this system to other coaches and consultants for a set-up fee and modest monthly payments.
It has taken me almost 5 years to arrive at the combination of theme and plugins that make this system a marketing powerhouse. That represents a massive shortcut and saving in time and money for anyone who purchases my system!
This article is a product creation update as it seems appropriate to review where I am at present given that this is being written right at the beginning of a new year – 2014.
MarkSalmon.Info
Today I released Mark Salmon .Info onto the market. This is a collection of video training packages to which I have resell rights.
They can either be bought individually for $27 a piece or as a package where 1 training is dripped out every week for a monthly subscription of $27 i.e. you get access to 4 trainings for the price of one every month.
Each training comprises between 7 and 12 videos and some include audios, powerpoint slides and transcriptions.
They cover a wide range of topics about internet marketing to give anyone who purchases a well-rounded education in internet marketing.
35 trainings have currently been added to this product and this will rise to at least 52 shortly so that I have at least one years content available.
This product also gives me the ability to plug any of my customers or students into an appropriate training on a wide variety of topics.
For example, if you want to add a product to an affiliate site like Clickbank or Digiresults then there are trainings on exactly how to do that. Alternatively, you may want to create some graphics using the available free tools online – there is a training on that too! Or perhaps you want a business model or strategy to pursue like flipping websites – yes, you can get a training on this too.
There are far too many topics to cover here but you can click on the image below to get more information on all the good training that I am releasing on MarkSalmon.info:
Easy Graphics 101
I have one module about Photoshop Actions to complete on this product and this will then be complete apart from the sales letter. Hopefully this should be completed and released by the end of January. This is how the site looks currently but is has not yet been released for sale. It includes 4 modules:
Solo Ads Assassin
Solo Ads Assassin has been completed in partnership with Daniel Madeira who operates a solo ads business. I did the technical site set-up and put some of my other products into the sales funnel to create a very nice offer.
Unfortunately, Daniel has had to deal with some personal problems first before he could contemplate launching this product.
Again, all the content is on the site and it is ready to rock and roll. Here is how this site looks and hopefully it will be up for sale by the end of January:
Email-ATM
This product has been mapped out on a mind-map and all the bonuses have been added to the site – there are 4 or 5 high-value bonuses related to email marketing.
I just need to create the core content and I am pencilling in a completion dater for this site of the end of February 2014.
Wake Up To Health
I am currently helping my sister, Saira, to build a health membership site which will include a number of health related products.
Her first product will be on weight-loss. Again, I am handling the technical set-up for a fee but I have included a number of premium plugins to give her an incredible marketing platform including:
a premium WordPress theme
a premium membership plugin
a premium plugin for creating ‘courses’ out of her tutorials i.e. a questionnaire at the end of each module to ensure tat students understand the content and much more
a premium squeeze and sales page plugin which includes split-testing functionality
a podcast and video player plugin to handle audio and video files
In addition to the above, I am considering purchasing a developers license to offer the ability to integrate her site with Google Hangouts so she can offer live and automated webinars. Also, whether to upgrade her video to the premium video player that I use on my sites that normally costs $297.
In total, this site offers her the ability to create multiple membership products and to market these effectively using blogging, social media, podcasts, video marketing and webinars.
My sister has been struggling with the technical aspects of this project for over 11 months and it has taken me less than 3 days so far to get her ready to get this project into over-drive in 2014.
She was quoted between $2,000 and $10,000 for this work, but I am only charging her a small fraction of that price for 3 days work.
I just wonder how may other coaches and consultants are in the same position – blocked by technology and the steep learning curve required to get their information and coaching out to their market.
One project that I am pencilling in is to create a site clone, with all the key plugins included, and offer this out for a modest set-up fee and monthly payment to keep it affordable. This to include hosting and maintenance.
Here is how my sisters site looks currently and there is about one days work left to complete and it will then be ready for her to start adding content:
Business Creation Mastery
Business Creation Mastery is my most important product that I want to get launched in January as well! I have been planning this out over the Xmas period and I have been building towards this for a long time.
My vision has been to help other people to set-up and grow a business online. I am going to narrow my niche down to coaches and consultants in a variety of niches who all have similar needs i.e. to get their training and content online and who are frustrated by the technology barrier and what it takes.
After almost 5 years online and prior to that, 8 years of consulting and 25 years of banking experience, I feel that I must have confidence in my ability to add value to the lives of other aspiring online or offline entrepreneurs. I am now going to engage with them more closely, find out what they want, and then support them using a mixture of one-on-one help, group coaching and access to my automated products.
My mission will be to help them to deliver their own unique value into their own niche or marketplace in a variety of formats.
This site has been in the planning stages for some months now and it’s ready to be launched now – I have been listening to podcasts by Sean Mize during the last couple of weeks and that has convinced me to launch now. After all, I have already done it offline and with 5 years experience online I know I have a tonne to offer.
Conclusion
That is the current state-of-play of my products currently under development. I am going to try to create 1 hour of content each day – mainly audios but also written and video. However, one of the key areas I need to concentrate on is driving traffic to my sales funnels to convert my products into more sales.
You can see from this product creation update that I am ready to hit the New Year running as my target this year is to make at least a 6-figure income and I will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
To put this plan into perspective, let’s retrace my steps during 2013.
At the start of 2013, I was in another coaching programme which relied heavily on the WSO launch model.
I subsequently listened to a webinar that made it clear that such a model was not a sustainable business. This webinar advocated the affiliate recruitment model and as a result I joined Marc Milburn’s coaching programme in May 2013.
At the time, I had developed just a couple of products – List Building Renegade and WP Website Wizard. In joining Marc’s programme and learning the material within his Digital Millionaires Bootcamp, my productivity increased and I have subsequently created a lot more products.
Whilst I have flexed my muscles on product creation, I have not marketed my products to any great extent because I have a vision of coaching a holistic programme on how to build an online business. Each of my products is designed to fit into my overall vision.
In creating these products I have been building my online business muscle. The quality of presentation of my products has gradually been improving helped by tools such as Easy Video Suite.
In addition, Marc has given me greater clarity about how the info marketing model works and I have re-branded my business around my personal name.
In the meantime, I have learned better techniques for creating eReports, Audios and Videos. This has included a focus in graphic creation to package my products nicely.
In 2014, it’s now time to create a really unique business led by my high-end coaching programme to position me as an expert in my chosen sub-niche – more about that later!
I must now focus on exactly how I will change my students lives through my coaching and products.
My purpose has long been that I want to help other people start and create their own online business using my unique expertise forged by:
25 years in corporate banking
6 years consulting with a global consulting business – RAN ONE.
1 year running a manufacturing business
and 5 years running an internet marketing business.
There are many people who have an expertise or expert knowledge that need to know exactly how to leverage that knowledge online. I can show them how to:
begin with the end in mind
how to get from where they are now to where they want to be
how to structure their business
the various online business models available
how to create digital products and services
how to automate and systemise their online processes
how to market their business and generate traffic to a sales funnel that converts
how to deliver the product through multiple modalities including through Amazon S3 and and Cloudfront and membership sites
how to brand their business
how to communicate and follow-up with prospects and customers using email marketing and other methods
how to structure their sales letters and presentations
how to outsource parts of their online business
how to secure your online assets
how to monitor and measure the key performance indicators such as the conversions statistics
So specifically what do I want to achieve in 2014? Here are my goals:
to narrow my niche focus – perhaps concentrate on business or health coaches and consultants, or both (my sister is a health consultant)
I want to master and use Google Hangouts as my preferred webinar platform
I would also like some speaking engagements – I used to do speaking as a consultant but have not done so for a few years now
I also want to master the book-publishing model (- I have access to a high-level training from someone earning over £1m per annum from around 70 books, few of which she wrote herself!) – publishing a book is a great way of establishing authority in your niche in addition to earning income from the sales.
to create a high-value coaching programme and funnel
to improve and transform the lives of the people who want to be my students
I was a relationship banker – I now want to focus on being a relationship business coach and marketing consultant i.e. concentrate on building solid relationships with my students and customers.
I want to systemise and modularise my training so that it can plugged and played into customised solutions for customers because we are all at different stages of development and expertise.
I will focus on online beginners and intermediate students.
I will massively increase productivity in 2014 i.e. content creation.
to generate an income of $10,000 per month in 2014 from a mix of group coaching, product sales and affiliate commissions
each week I want to make at least one person happy.
I will do what it takes to achieve these goals and to implement this business plan for 2014.
Do you anchor your sales funnel with a coaching programme?
If you don’t, then this may be the reason why you are not selling as many info products as you would like.
Why? Because a high-priced coaching programme positions you as an expert or guru in your niche and if your prospects cannot afford your coaching programme then they will buy the lesser-priced products in your funnel in lieu of your top-end coaching programme.
You will of course want products with a range of prices in your funnel that lead up to your top-end product to cater for each persons budget: – for example…
$37 one problem / one solution type of product
Your monthly automated continuity programme e.g. $27 per month
Your lower-priced group coaching
Top-priced one-on-one coaching
If you think about it hard enough, all the top ‘gurus’ run a similar business model – they are not relying on product sales alone. There are a few exceptions but in the main, most of the so-called gurus run a high-end coaching programme.
No coaching programme = no longer a guru = no more product sales.
Hope that makes perfect sense!
My coaching programme is called Business Creation Mastery and will be launching in the New Year because I practice what I preach.
If you still don’t see with 20/20 clarity why you need to anchor your sales funnel with a coaching programme then click this link to read the message again but in different words:
I have set up MarkSalmon.info as my new resell rights and PLR vault. I have acquired, and continue to acquire, the rights to a lot of internet marketing training and content but I have so far failed to leverage these products other than to use some of them as bonuses to my products.
I recently acquired rights to 60 video trainings and thought that it was high time to organise my PLR and Resell assets into a format that my customers could consume.
I am therefore organising, branding and putting the content into a new membership site where:
products can be bought individually, or
in bundles, or
in sales funnels, or
in a drip fed monthly recurring membership where customers will get at least one product per week
Because the content is mostly about internet marketing, it can be applied to any niche.
Rather than have pages and pages of videos – each training course has between 7 and 10 videos – I am arranging the training into video playlists i.e. just one video player accesses all the training videos for each particular course. where possible, I am adding in audio versions, powerpoint slides and transcriptions for each course.
In total, I am organising around 5 to 600 videos and creating 60 or more sales letters.
I’m also going to add in my PLR eBooks to this site and make it an all-round education on internet marketing.
As long as it doesn’t contravene the terms of my license, I will also be offering some of these products as relevant bonuses for affiliate or my own product promotions. I will also be offering discounted coupons from time-to-time to tempt my customers to sample these trainings.
I am arranging the videos by subject matter – for example, all ‘traffic’ videos will be available as a discounted bundle or individually.
This is all part of my build up to make 2014 my best year yet online – I will have a lot of products to deploy in many creative ways to meet the needs of my customers.
You can view the progress in setting up MarkSalmon.info as my new resell rights and PLR vault on my ‘Other Products‘ page which gives you a good idea on the large variety of topics covered by these trainings.
I’ve set up some free coaching emails on the subject of list building.
List building is one of THE most important goals of any online business.
The plain fact is that only a very small percentage of visitors to your web pages will make a purchase. Why? Because you have no relationship with them so they do not know, like and trust them.
The process of list building is simple:
First offer your visitor something that is attractive for free or at a cost that is far below its perceived value.
Ideally this needs to be presented on a squeeze page with no other distractions to capture their email contact details on your auto-responder account.
Have a follow-up email sequence in place to educate your visitor as to why they should listen to you and click your money-making links.
The emphasis on this process is to create a relationship with your potential customer.
This means that communications should ideally be a mixture of value and promotion – after all, you are in business and if you don’t promote it will be difficult to sustain your business. By offering free stuff all the time, you are educating your prospects to expect to get everything for free. So some promotional activity is important if you wish to remain in business.
If they unsubscribe from your list, so be it, they are not a good fit for your business.
Here is proof that my list building is working – I came in third on the leaderboard of the recent promotion of Digital Millionaires Bootcamp after the initial launch:
Here is my final position on the leaderboard after the offer closed out:
To help my visitors to set up a list building process, I’ve put together a free coaching course on list building that is delivered in a follow-up series of emails – you can sign up for free here – or you can invest in my comprehensive course on list building called List Building Renegade.
1 – Bonus Webinar Coaching – Product Creation Webinar Series
Chris Cole & Mark Salmon are offering a bonus coaching course that will span over 4 weeks. You will have the chance to ask your questions and have Mark & Chris answer these as well as offering some great additional training content.
Yes you can also get access to Marc Millburn’s Fast Profits Formula as an exclusive bonus for Chris and Mark’s customers. We have twisted Marc’s arm to give you access to this standalone product that teaches you how to be a product creation monster within days.
In this complete course Mark Salmon teaches you how to successfully create your very own digital products. This is all contained within it’s own members area and you can drop in at any time to learn and enjoy even more bonus training.
4 – Chris Cole’s Unlock WordPress
Yes there are over 60 videos in the course from Chris Cole teaching you how to master WordPress. This course will turn you into a WordPress master within hours. Chris covers everything you need to get started right away with WordPress.
Please claim your bonus by sending me your paypal transaction ID through my Contact Form and put the subject as ‘DMB Bonus‘
If You want to take advantage of Digital Millionaires Bootcamp and our Bonus, you need to hurry because it will not be available for long – Marc could decide to take it down at any time.
