Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

You have to love the Internet marketing world. There’s a certain amount of jaded bitterness that surfaces when you sell something that presents a make money online opportunity. Every time I promote a product related to marketing or online income generation, there are those people out there who have adopted the belief that all marketers are liars and their products are more sales than substance.

Some might argue that it’s the hype - the language used to sell Internet marketing, in particular the long sales page format, that elicits the snarky comments or the sighs of “not again” from a handful of viewers. The disdain is palpable from some people and as much as I understand where they are coming from, it would be nice to only deal with satisfied customers.

You can’t please all of the people all of the time and everyone has a different experience and mindset, which isn’t always positive. No matter what you sell, there are people who will take issue with what you do and how you do it to the point where they feel the need to publicly state their disapproval.

I’m a bit tired of negativity, so today I’m going to relay to you three “golden nuggets” from three products I purchased from Internet marketers who sell Internet marketing products - the prime targets of the naysayers.

I spent at least $1,000 on each of these information products and they have all had a positive impact on my business and returned more than their cost in increased income and resource savings. Note these ideas - the nuggets - are just a sample of what I learned from the products and as anyone successful knows, it’s the two or three really powerful ideas that make a big difference.

Here are three examples -

Butterfly Marketing by Mike Filsaime

I purchased Mike’s product a long time ago originally thinking that it was the software script I wanted. It turned out that the script didn’t cut it for what I needed, but the information - the butterfly marketing manuscript that Mike himself wrote about his techniques - that really had an impact on what I did in 2007.

The release of Blog Mastermind (which incidentally has now generated over $100,000) was heavily influenced by Mike’s techniques. There’s many ideas I could draw on for this article, but I’m going to focus on one concept I think is really valuable and I’ve never seen it presented in any other product besides Butterfly Marketing.

Keep It Simple - Offer Steps

Mike’s entire premise is about encouraging viral events so your users carry the message forward. One of the key understandings behind this is simplicity and guidance - make things ridiculously easy and put big fat sign-posts that tell people what to do.

I took this principle and flat out copied Mike’s methods as it applies to the affiliate area of your website. The idea is that you offer your affiliates all the promotional tools on one single page and present them as steps to take. For example…

Step 1: Copy this email and send it to your list
Step 2: Put these banners on your website
Step 3: Fill out this tell a friend form

…and so on.

I’ve been a member of many affiliate programs and nearly every one makes it very hard to navigate and find the tools you want and they don’t tell you what to do with them. Unfortunately the problem usually rests with the affiliate script itself, having been designed by developers and not marketers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create a single page that guides the affiliate through the promotional resources available.

If you offer an affiliate program, keep it really simple, offer one page with all the promo tools as copy-and-paste options and presented as steps. The only other page you need is a statistics page to show referrals, leads and conversion. That’s it! - Affiliates don’t need anything more and you shouldn’t complicate things or hide resources behind tiny hyperlinks or old-fashioned navigation structures.

Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System

Rich’s coaching program is massive and terribly comprehensive. The end goal of the course is the creation of a business that functions autonomously and frees the entrepreneur to enjoy whatever lifestyle they choose. This is not something that is easy and there’s a lot of ingrained habits you need to change and new awareness you need to create in order to truly adopt the system Rich teaches.

I learned a mountain of ideas from Rich but there was one key concept that I really took to heart and implemented throughout the time I was studying his course in 2006 and 2007. I began to outsource and change my business to a model that is sustainable and based on my strengths.

Before Rich’s training I was excited about money making ideas and things I could do in my business to generate more cash. Unfortunately most of the ideas where either not sustainable, depended on me entirely too much or were divergent from my core strengths.

Rich helped to cement my future and as a result in 2007 I sold a business that was profitable and easy to maintain, but not heading in a direction I wanted to go, and then started a new business. I began to rely on other people a lot more and opted to focus on only a very few projects tightly in tune with my core positioning.

In a nutshell, Rich provided clarity and presented practical steps to take to get there. Some of this is mindset, so it’s difficult to grasp the benefits if you don’t live them and on the surface it might look like all I did was hire some good tech people and release an information product, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

A Practical Tip

If you are the kind of person who likes raw techniques, here’s just one very simple one from Rich’s training that I used -

When you are looking to hire people, use your existing communication channels. In my case I used my blog, my email list and my friend network to attract every person I currently work with. I never used any traditional method like a jobs board or recruitment service.

Remember, your marketing channels can be used for more than just selling, you can also use it for recruitment and chances are the people you bring on board from your current readers/prospects, will make better staff because of their established engagement and familiarity with you and what you do.

Product Launch Formula by Jeff Walker

There’s so much to say about the Product Launch Formula methodology from Jeff I don’t know where to begin.

A product launch is an interesting beast. On the surface it seems relatively simple. String together some emails, release some resources, build some buzz, slap on some scarcity and social proof, and sell copious amounts of your product.

When you break it down you realize there is a lot to it and WOW - there’s a huge amount of work to do.

Jeff taught me a lot and in the spirit of keeping things practical, here’s a technique I simply would not have known or benefited from if I did not purchase Product Launch Formula…

How Much Should You Charge For Your Product?

One of the hardest questions to answer whenever releasing a product is how much should you charge? The answer itself is simple - whatever results in the most profit (in most cases). Finding out the specific number that results in the greatest profit is the tricky part.

Jeff presents a very simple method for determining price - ask your audience how much they would pay.

Yeah, genius isn’t it.

This method is based on you having access to an audience, in other words you need a responsive list first, but once that is in place, here are the five questions Jeff suggests you ask in a survey -

1. What price is so cheap that you would question the value of this widget?
2. At what price would this widget be a good deal?
3. At what price would this widget be expensive, but still worth buying?
4. At what price is this widget too expensive?
5. How interested are you in this widget?

Jeff then takes the responses, plots a graph and comes up with a price range ready to test. From there it’s simply a matter of testing volume and pricing points to find the maximum.

The pricing survey step slots into the product launch process during the prelaunch and takes a lot of the guesswork out of pricing. When I surveyed my list prior to releasing Blog Mastermind I received some very interesting responses to my question about pricing and if it wasn’t for Product Launch Formula, I would not have known to ask the question.

Buying Products Actually Makes You Money

I’m not going to dive into a diatribe on how every information product can make you money if you take action. We all know that action is the key and if you are in the right circumstances where you can leverage what you learn, most information products represent very good value for money. At least certainly every product I have purchased and talked about on this blog.

It should come as no surprise that those who are truly successful in this world are the people who take action. One of those actions is buying products, studying them and then implementing the techniques.

No one knows everything and that’s why you must learn from other people’s experience and knowledge. The Internet marketing world is fantastic because of how much great information flows in the community and if you just take the opportunity to implement what you learn, the rewards are amazing.

No one successful wastes time by using their energy and time resources to bitch and moan about the legitimacy of a product, they are too busy working to actually make money using the techniques they learn.

Two of the biggest lessons you can learn are to respect education and admire hard work. Take that to heart and you are well on your way to awakening to your true potential.

Yaro Starak
Awakening