How To Maximize Profit From Every Product You Create
In 2007 I launched a program called Blog Mastermind, which as far as I could tell at the time, was the first blog training program created by someone who had a profitable blog.
Of course there were many other bloggers out there at the time who made money blogging – many who made more than I did – but most weren’t in the business of teaching how to do Internet marketing. They focused on creating content to feed their hungry audience in whatever niche they targeted, monetizing with methods like advertising and selling affiliate products.
Even those bloggers who where focused on teaching others how to make money online, hadn’t adopted the idea of creating a products or even building email lists. Everything was about earning more from AdSense, or how to increase your pageviews so you could charge more for advertising.
In my case I had spent the previous two years studying the work of Internet marketers, who didn’t blog, but instead used landing pages to build email lists and then drive that traffic to sales pages to sell products. Up to that point I was like every other blogger, making a solid almost-full time income thanks to sponsors and promoting affiliate products like ebooks, DVD courses and live workshops.
I won’t go into detail about what happened after I released my own product as that story is well accounted for in my free report – The Membership Site Masterplan – and in the video on my Membership Site Mastermind sales page, so check out those two resources if you want the details.
In short, creating Blog Mastermind and doing a full launch campaign for it, changed my life because it pushed my income above six figures for the first time.
The Lifecycle Of An Information Product
Don’t Let Your Ignorance Stop You
This is the fourth article in a series on Positive Change. My goal with this series is to give you the tools necessary to manifest positive change in your reality, or simply put, to get what you want and eliminate what you don’t want in your life.
Before you read this article, make sure you read the first three in the series in this order –
- Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
- What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want
- Why Creating The Change You Want Is All About You
I re-read the first three articles in the series before beginning this fourth chapter, which led me to a realization that I was potentially missing out one of the most important points. Based on observation of people who struggle in life, this sticking point is something critical to eliminate early on, otherwise you’re going to hit a brick wall every time you look to make changes.
My intention is to complete this series with an insight that is literally the key to not only having whatever you want in your life, but also making the entire planet a better place, but before I do that, we need to get one roadblock out of the way. Let’s do that now…
We’ve laid a framework that can lead you to realizing positive changes in your life, which is based on the following five core principles -
- Those who truly excel in life do so by repeating processes over and over again, resulting in a compounding effect that can eventually take you to amazing places. A “success ladder” is available to achieve almost anything in life, so if you’re prepared to go through steps and repeat something often enough to get good at it, you can have or be almost anything you want.
- Your awareness – how you interpret everything around you – is what governs your ability to get things done. How you see the world impacts how you think about the world, which impacts how you feel, and thus how you interact with the world. Your interpretation can help you or hinder you, and this is regardless of what is true – the choice is entirely up to you. You decide your truth, so choose to see the world in a way that is beneficial for making the changes you want in your life.
- Some things are out of your control and you’re not always going to get what you expect. You must master the art of continuous improvement, regardless of conditions. You’re human, so you’re going to feel emotions that have the potential to derail your progress, but only if you let them. It’s necessary to keep taking steps towards change, even when you don’t feel like it.
- There’s always a smart choice you can make, given a set of conditions, but unfortunately most people do what other people do, which often is NOT the smart choice. Don’t let social conditioning, peer pressure or accepted practice govern your choices, instead, assess what you personally have to work with, and make the best decisions from where you are coming from and where you want to go.
- Follow the success patterns of other people – the smart decisions other people made who presently have what you are now seeking are there to be modeled any time you want. Don’t follow anything blindly, but don’t go in blind either. There is so much information available to learn almost anything, so use these resources to help you discern the smart choices for you.
Beware Your Own Ignorance
These five principles can take you far, but there’s an insidious force that has a nasty habit of derailing people before they adopt and practice these ideas, which I label “Ignorance“.
Industry Shift: What The Armada Music Label Can Teach Us About New Media Marketing
You may not know this about me (unless you follow me on Twitter where I tweet music video clips from time to time), but I’m a huge fan of the progressive and vocal trance scene. That’s dance music for the uninitiated, although the genre of dance is massive in terms of all the categories and sub-categories, which includes genres like techno and rave music, which you might be familiar with.
In the case of trance music, the leading DJ, at least in terms of a popular vote run by DJ Mag, is Armin Van Buuren. Armin has been number one for three years running and as DJs and trance producers go, he’s about as prolific and talented as they come. I’m a fan, that’s for sure.
One of the things I enjoy often late at night when I’m in the mood for music is to trawl around YouTube watching video clips of the latest and classic trance tracks. There’s an absolute library of great music in YouTube, and of course it’s all free.
Armin Van Buuren is not only the number one DJ, he is also co-founder of a music label called Armada Music. One of the very smart things I’ve noticed Armada is doing is making heavy use of YouTube as a marketing channel.
At least 50% of the tracks I listen to on YouTube come from Armada, especially if I follow a music trail going from one track to the next following the “similar video” recommendations provided by the YouTube algorithm.
Watching Armada use YouTube is interesting, because the music is free, but obviously the company makes money. I believe Armada, and labels like them, are pioneers in adopting new media, rather than fighting it. There’s a lesson in this case study for any of us who want to leverage the web for exposure of creative output, even if their is a profit motivation behind it.
The Profit Model For Music Has Changed
How To Find Focus When Drowning In Opportunity
It was post-lunch, and I was sitting on my couch trying to find my productive energy, with the air-conditioning on during a particularly hot Australian summer day (35 Celsius to be exact). Sitting opposite me was Gideon Shalwick, my partner in crime in the Become A Blogger Premium program, equally struggling to find his mojo due to the combination of a full belly and a hot day.
We had come together to discuss our next big project – a live event to be held in Australia during the first half of 2010. However our conversation managed to balloon beyond our initial subject limitation and we were jumping from topic to topic, with each new issue opening up something else.
As the afternoon progressed it became clear that we weren’t going to reach any specific conclusions that day, although the discussion was certainly helpful.
As Gideon pointed out, decisions made now, will impact where you will be in six months. The start of a new year is a particularly important time as most people start new projects, or begin new phases in the development of their business.
In our case we’ve reached transition points, where we face a huge array of opportunities. Gideon and I don’t face the same decisions on all levels since our personal lives are different, as are the stages of development of our businesses. Since we share projects, some of the decisions we make must be made together, and when that happens, we need an extra level of clarity because what we do impacts not just ourselves.
It’s easy to change things when it’s only you in charge, but when you are in a partnership, each shift requires involvement of your partner, or you risk creating confusion and even conflict (read of this article on partnerships for more on these kinds of issues: Is A Partnership Right For You?).
Many of the new opportunities open to us, such as the live event, are projects that we have very little experience with. We’ve attended live events before of course, but never hosted one ourselves, hence we’re wary of what we don’t know that we need to know and prepare for.
Making the decision process even more complicated are the existing projects we have, which could be optimized and expanded, if we choose to follow that path.
To put it simply, this isn’t a simple decision. There are many interrelated issues, conditions and decisions that have an impact on other decisions.
Normally I pick one major project and focus most of my “new creation” energy there, while working to keep the regular processes, like blog articles and email content flowing as usual, but this time it’s challenging because all my new opportunities really are new.
In my case I already made the decision to launch a private coaching program, and if you’re already one of my paying members you should have received an email with a link to the invitation page to check it out. If it doesn’t sell out to my private members, I’ll offer an invite to the public, so stay tuned for that.
The rest of my decision making for the next six months is still a work in progress. This is of course not the first time I’ve faced this kind of “problem” and it’s a very common one for entrepreneurs.
Even as you become more stable, develop cash flow and determine what projects are worth pursuing and what should be scrapped or avoided, it doesn’t make the decision making process any easier. In fact it usually becomes even more complicated, since success tends to open doors to new opportunities, and you always have the opportunity to improve on what’s already working.
So how can you find the answer to the too many opportunities problem, especially when you reach major transition points in your business life?
Paradigm Shift: How You Sell With Email Is Changing
Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to recordings of Perry Marshall’s Live Workshop on email autoresponders held in Chicago. It’s some really great content, direct from one of the online marketers I trust the most.
Perry really hammered home a point that on some levels, I haven’t fully taken to heart in the past.
That point is, for long term success, you can’t expect to survive the changing online business environment, without fully cementing your place as a leader by constantly delivering trust-building quality content.
This isn’t anything new of course, but realizing how to truly embed this ethos into how you run your business, and in particular for us online entrepreneurs and how we market through email, is more difficult than you might think.
Why? Because it’s so easy to fall for the lure of the quick buck.
It’s too easy to be lazy, and most people aren’t prepared to wait and put in the effort to establish themselves. They want a return on their work in a matter of weeks or a few short months, not the years it’s going to take to build your following, set up systems and ultimately, establish a quality business.
Perry sums up this idea using a great example in how to operate an email marketing campaign using autoresponders.
Most online marketers in recent years have built email lists that they essentially use to constantly promote affiliate products and launches. Finding a marketer who sends content out to their list, even as often as 50% of the emails they send, is rare.
As Perry explains, once customers get sick of the spam, it’s those marketers who built an autoresponder system that uses quality content to foster trust, and not hit their customers with excessive pitches, who succeed.
When the water rises, only those who have built a strong fortification survive. The rest drown.
The water is definitely rising right now in the Internet marketing industry.
It’s pretty clear, in the make money niche, the majority of marketers, even the best ones, have at times abused their lists by sending out too much pitch and not enough content, and I’m including myself in this claim. This could have worked in the past, but we’re reaching a saturation point. It’s safe to say that long term, you won’t survive by sending only emails that ask people to buy something.
I know this is true, because I’ve felt the change in my business. Email response rates are down. I choose to say no to promoting new launches now more than ever before because I know each promotion I do damages relationships with my list. People are sick of the same pitches, from the same people using the same trigger points. Our customers are getting wiser to fluff and consequently gravitating towards substance.
Perry really emphasized this point throughout his workshop, and he’s not alone, I’ve taken the idea to heart in the last few months so much that it has shifted my entire focus in 2010.
I plan to continue to be about substance even more so than in the past, which considering most of my current marketing is about content, says a lot about how important I think this change is.
