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

While I was creating Blog Mastermind, I was concerned about the shelf life of my product. I didn’t want to create something that would be out of date six months later. I wanted to create something that could help people for a long time and avoid creating a product that would require I keep working on it constantly just to keep it current.

Every niche is different, however I feel confident saying that the first time you launch your product, when it is brand new and you’ve never promoted it to your audience before, is when it sells the best. There may be other considerations – for example offering a discount price for your first launch to reward the “charter members” for their early support – which could inflate the first launch sales results, but in most cases it’s the “new” factor that gives the edge.

This is why you see marketers re-brand their existing products a “2.0″ version and talk about all the updates and new features when they do subsequent launches. If you keep selling the same thing, a law of diminishing returns sets in, unless you can tap into new audiences each time you market your product.

All that being said, it’s how you market your product, rather than the content in it, that is important. If you market a product with a new angle, it’s almost as good as launching something fresh, though you have to be careful not to mislead people. A different angle can be something as simple as targeting a different market, perhaps refining your niche to a more specific group of people.

Blog Mastermind did well during the first and second launches, but by the third I noticed it was not selling as well, comparatively speaking (it still did thousands in sales). This was to be expected as I had already “launched” the product to the same people, so besides the new audience I had attracted since the previous launch, I was trying to sell the same thing to the same subscribers, many of whom had already signed up.

Thankfully, besides some minor updates over the first year, Blog Mastermind has remained relevant and an effective system, even given changes to the blogging environment. My goal of creating “timeless” content has largely been met.

This was achievable because I focused on fundamental strategies and techniques that remain effective long term. For example, the concept of Pillar Content is not going to change, and making money with advertising, affiliate programs and selling your own products, have remained the most effective monetization strategies for years – and still are.

How Many Launches Is Too Many Launches

I’ve been involved with the creation and launch process of three products over the past three years, and seen countless other products in my industry launched and re-launched by other marketers.

Some products, like Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula and Brad Fallon’s Stompernet have launched, then six months to a year later come back as a 2.0 version and so on and on for several iterations. Other products are revived with $1 trial offers, or added as a forced or optional continuity bundled with a you-only-pay-shipping front end offers.

When considering how many times to open and close a product you need to think about many variables, including -

• Do you want to add new material or update the product to justify a “2.0″ tag to keep it fresh? This is an important question, because you could spend the time creating another product instead, and releasing something brand new usually does better than revamping something old, plus it increases how many products you have on the market, which generally means you make more money.
• Have you fixed any problems with the existing product you discovered when you launched it the first time? There’s no point doing a second or third launch if your product has fatal errors in it you haven’t addressed.
• Is there a means to tap into new audiences, for example attracting new affiliates, that could keep the product selling just as well on the second or third launches?
• Are you prepared for the emotional and financial considerations if your product doesn’t sell as well? Do you have a plan B for this year’s income if it flops?
• Have you had enough of running launch campaigns? These can be quite tiring and could have an impact on relationships with your subscribers (are they sick of the same old marketing story?) and your affiliates (are they willing to promote the same product again?)

Why Stop Selling Your Product?

You might ask why keep launching a product when you could just leave it available for sale without closing it down.

That’s a valid question, and the answer in pretty much all tests I’ve ever seen is simple – you make more money when you take a product off the market.

Why?

Scarcity.

People are motivated to buy something when they know they can’t get it tomorrow. If your product is available next week, then they can think about it and buy it later. If it’s pulled from the market, decision time is now, which usually results in a “maybe” turning into a “yes”.

I can unequivocally state that you will make more money if you take your product off the market, if you have not launched your product before. If you combine this scarcity with all the other elements that go into a good launch campaign, you have a formula to make a lot of money in a short space of time.

The only downside doing this is that there are people who will go through your marketing process after your launch is over and want to buy then, who won’t be able to. This is good because it creates pent-up demand, but it’s also bad because they may have only bought right then immediately after sampling your free resources, and the urge may have worn off by the time your next launch rolls around, when they are no longer interested in what you sell.

So What Is The Best Formula?

I don’t have an answer that is universally applicable for every product and the choice really rests on how much work you want to do and what type of work, but I can tell you what has proven successful for me.

The formula I’ve applied in roughly the same format for all of my products is to launch two or three times, with the final opening resulting in the product remaining on the market for sale at any time.

This format means you get the benefit of at least two opening launches with the scarcity of the product going off the market, and the opportunity for all your members to work with you together at the same time (this is actually pretty cool, especially as it enhances the community aspect as each group do the work together).

Once the final launch is done, which usually is the least effective because by around the third launch you’ve sold the same product already twice before, you then leave your product available for purchase at any time.

With your product permanently open the income isn’t as significant as doing an open and shut launch campaign, and it comes over a much longer period of time, however it’s definitely a more passive form of revenue because launches take work.

During all of 2009 Blog Mastermind was for sale and continued to bring in new members week after week, with no additional marketing required on my part beyond what I already do – write great blog posts and email newsletters. I wasn’t sure how long it would last, but I’ve been very pleased to see that week after week, people continue to join Blog Mastermind and the refund rate is very low – so people are still benefiting from the course. It’s become a real cash cow, a pleasing result for sure – and it’s still selling strong today.

From Hard Work To Passive Income

If you’ve been watching my work during the start of 2010, you should have noticed that I opened up Become A Blogger Premium (with co-creator Gideon Shalwick) and just last week, Membership Site Mastermind. This time we left the programs on the market. They are now available for anyone to join whenever they want to.

All of my products, which are all courses, have taken a minimum of six months worth of work to create. That’s some pretty full-on work for those six months, especially if you are running a blog and all the other bits that go into your online business like customer support, email newsletters and affiliate promotions, at the same time.

When Blog Mastermind first launched I only had some of the member resources and the very first lesson ready to go. For the next 26 weeks I created at least one lesson a week, staying just ahead of the members taking the program, held coaching calls, created videos and audios, responded to questions in the forum and maintained my blog and email newsletter. This took some serious discipline, but I was committed to creating a great product.

I later reopened Blog Mastermind two more times, but the work required was much less significant because the product was complete. After the final opening campaign I left the product on the market, and as I explained, it has been selling consistently ever since.

My hope is that all three of my programs will continue to sell well this year. They were all constructed with a focus on fundamentals, so should remain reasonably up to date, and certainly valuable no matter when you join, so I expect sales to be brisk.

The great thing about having all the programs on the market is I can now set my sights on optimizing my sales funnel. I can tweak my newsletter sequence to sell the products. Whenever I write relevant blog posts I can suggest people take my courses if they want more information. I can do joint ventures with affiliates at any time.

I don’t expect sales to be anywhere near as much as they were when the products were new and I ran launch campaigns, but since my information touches new people every day, I should see a new stream of customers, and so far so good – people are still joining the programs even as I type this.

Once I’m done optimizing the sales process for these products I’ll have a fairly clean slate in terms of workload and a very steady stream of very close to passive income. The next time I do a launch, it will be for something new.

Using this model you can, at least I have so far, make at least several hundred thousand dollars a year just by writing quality content to a blog and email newsletter on a consistent basis.

It takes time to set up your products, to write free reports, create free videos and do audio interviews, to conduct launch campaigns, write emails and coordinate affiliates, but once everything is set up, you have a wonderful machine that makes a lot of money in a short period of time, and can then switch to a solid passive income stream. It really is the best of both worlds, leveraging the product lifecycle in a way that mirrors the natural momentum of a demand curve.

How Can You Do The Same?

I’ve touched on quite a few ideas in this article, and while it is clear in my head how the pieces fit together because I’ve lived my business for the past five years, you’re probably missing a few pieces of the puzzle.

Obviously if you’re serious about doing what I do I recommend you take one or all of my courses, starting with Become A Blogger Premium if you are new to blogging and like learning form video, or Blog Mastermind if you prefer my writing style and want text lessons, then take Membership Site Mastermind (or perhaps skip straight to this course if you know blogging well enough already or don’t want to use a blogging strategy to build audience, but still want to create and launch your own products).

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet, that I will end this article with, is how important it is you focus on establishing a strong brand and market position. My products would not sell if it wasn’t for the combined force of my content and my brand, which are very interrelated. When people are repeatedly exposed to, and benefit from my free work, whether that is blog posts, or podcast interviews, or free reports, the natural next step if they want more, is to buy my courses.

There’s a lot of “stuff” out there that can potentially touch people with the Yaro brand, and the more often this happens, the more likely they are to take their relationship with me to the next level, by purchasing what I sell.

It’s your job to build as many exceptional, powerful and just plain valuable contact points with your audience so they discover who you are, what you stand for, what you can teach them, and where they could end up, if they decide to study and action what you teach. The more of you out there, the better, so get busy!

Yaro Starak
Still Producing

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Before you read this article, make sure you read the first three in the series in this order –

1. Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
2. What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want
3. 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 -

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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“.

Ignorance can come in many shapes and forms and is pervasive in our current society. Almost everyone “suffers” from it in some way.

The problem with ignorance is that it creates a rigid belief structure that stops certain ideas even having a chance. If you’re stubborn, and you believe certain things must be a certain way, or you’ve learned a certain way of looking at the world that you refuse to change, then you’ve locked yourself into a box.

Some people, even if their own framework is flexible, suffer from the ignorance of people around them, which can include your immediate family and friends, or more wide reaching social structures, political and religious systems and cultural norms. These structures impact you if you choose to partake in them (you could always become a hermit and live in a cave).

You have a choice in how you interpret everything, so even if you are forced to adhere to a rule or system you don’t think is right, you can choose how you respond to it. This is why people locked into a life sentence in jail can still find happiness, yet those who have abundant freedom can still find a way to be miserable.

I’m sure you know what it is like when you’re talking to a friend in a bad relationship, or a job that’s not right for them, or they have a habit they refuse to quit like smoking, yet no matter how hard you try and make them realize what they are doing is not beneficial, it just doesn’t get through. This is frustrating because of course you want what is best for the people around you, but ultimately you can’t make decisions for other people.

The problem becomes especially pronounced when you don’t share a basic framework, ideology or world view that is compatible with the person you are communicating with. If you’re talking about something that is blue, but your friend is wearing red-tinted glasses, you have no possibility of “making” them see what you can see. They need to take off the glasses first – or try putting on another pair of glasses – which is something they have to decide to do for themselves.

It’s not your responsibility to change anyone, however you do have control over your own reality, and becoming aware of your ignorance is the first step to eliminate it. Some form of rigid thought process or belief system is holding you back right now, and you’re not even aware of it. This impacts how you make decisions and what actions you take, so until you deal with your own ignorance, you’re going to struggle to change.

Take Off Your Glasses

The first step you can take immediately is to start watching to see if you are wearing any “glasses” that are stopping you from making change.

Being open minded is great, but what I’m talking about here goes much deeper than that. You might consider yourself open minded already, but if you monitor your own reactions to what other people say, or what happens around you, you will see that even you have knee-jerk responses to situations, or behavior patterns that are entrenched in your lifestyle and impact your choices in ways you don’t currently see.

We’re all a product of our upbringing, cultural story, personality type and previous experiences. We interpret the world through our own lens that is constructed of all these things.

• If you believe that only bad people get rich, that will stop you from ever becoming rich yourself because you believe you have to be dishonest to get there.
• If you believe that people should treat you a certain way then you get upset when they don’t and immediately write them off as not worth knowing.
• If a good life is marriage, children and owning your home, but you’re single, broke and childless on your 35th birthday, then you must be a failure.

There are countless expectations like this that impact how we think and act in life, some of which we can see, some that we blindly follow every day without realizing.

Most people I know, myself included, make initial impression judgments based on things like how a person looks and what clothes they wear. Even though I’m open minded, I can’t help but make a judgment on some level, that’s what humans who are driven by egos do.

The key is to realize you are making judgments constantly, become aware of that, then drop them if they are hindering your progress or causing you to suffer. It takes work because you’re trying to unlearn patterns of behavior and thoughts you’ve likely continued for years, possibly your entire adult life.

Be careful not to fool yourself either. It’s easy to say something to the people around you based on what everyone expects because of social standards. No one expects you to be racist, so saying you’re not is expected behavior, but if the conversation in your head is actually racist, then you’re just lying to yourself.

This doesn’t have to be about something as severe as racism either. If you watch your thoughts you might be surprised at how often you tell yourself things you don’t really want to believe simply because of habit or conditioning. Changing what’s going on outside starts with reconstructing what’s going on inside you.

There Is No Such Thing As Truth

At this point in our discussion it’s important that I introduce an idea that might take you a little while to fully come to terms with. You might think you “get” this – I did at first – but then realized I really didn’t fully understand the implications of this concept.

It is something I have struggled to fully integrate into my life, but once you do, it can dramatically change how you perceive the world and all the people in it. Let’s take a look at this concept now, and in the next article in this series we will dig a little deeper. Here we go…

Truth, is only truth in your mind.

No one else on this planet shares what you consider true because no one else can be in your body at the same time as you, at least from the perspective of the individual (we will look at universal “oneness” later).

What you determine is true is based on what your senses interpret. The data from your body is sent to your mind, which determines how you perceive something. From there you use language to label what you have perceived, to make it possible to communicate with other people and categorize what is around you.

A red apple is a color that collectively we have agreed is red, however it’s only true because we’ve learned what the red label represents. Although I know what red looks like to me, I can never really know what red looks like to you. It’s safe to assume that most of us see it in a very similar way since we use our eyes – and we all have eyes that are constructed in a similar manner – but we can never be 100% certain what another person sees, it is impossible without becoming part of their consciousness.

Given the limitations of physical existence and our system of labels for language, it’s absolutely critical that you never attach yourself to an interpretation of truth. If you become attached to it, then you will start to emotionally identify it as your point of view and feel a need to impose it on other people, or defend it when others disagree. If your desire to make the world be something is so strong that you find yourself suffering as a result, you need to let go.

The awareness of just letting things go and pass through you, can be a wonderfully liberating realization. When you decide that what other people think about you, or how they see the world, or what they do, is not your responsibility, you enjoy an immense sense of relief. Deciding that it’s not your job to control the universe, but to flow with it, will make your life significantly easier.

Your only responsibility is to determine what you consider the truth – your truth – and act on that in each and every moment. If your truth is dynamic – not rigid – and you understand you are simply choosing to see things in a way that creates power in your life in that moment, then you’re doing the best you can.

Challenge Your Reality

Once you start monitoring and adjusting your own interpretation and you start to dissolve your judgments, something interesting will start to occur. You will get curious.

The great thing about opening your eyes to other colors is that suddenly the world doesn’t seem nearly as black and white as it used to. The more structures you have in your life, the more liberated you will feel as you break them down.

With this new sense of freedom you will desire more stimulus. Everything in the world will become more interesting because you won’t be focused so much on trying to make everything and everyone around you fit into “boxes”. The boxes of course, don’t exist, they are just mental constructs you’ve created to help you feel safe. When you drop the need to “feel safe”, let your ego go, the world and the people in it, don’t seem nearly as scary.

You will still have problems of course, but given your focus will be less on conformity and more about experience, you will gain an ability to solve problems with much less friction – in fact it will become a lot of fun.

• Instead of being so depressed because you can’t find a boyfriend or girlfriend, you will relish the challenge of meeting new people and breaking down your previous belief structures about your romantic life and what it means to be single.
• Instead of struggling with how hard it is to make money, you will look for more powerful ways to earn a living. Your eyes and mind will be open to doing things like starting a business and quitting the “secure” job you’ve previously stuck to because that’s just what everyone does and it feels safer.
• You will reassess what exactly it means to “be rich”. Money will have a completely new meaning to you.
• Instead of suffering the behavior of certain people in your life you will realize that you simply don’t need them and it’s okay to not be friends with everyone.

The fear of being lonely or “losing someone” will never impact who you decide to associate with. You will naturally gravitate to and draw in people when you need them. People who don’t empower your life will drop away. You will make the decision to not participate in the “drama” of interpersonal relationships, which so many people in the world today are addicted to.

Once you let go and expand your universe, suddenly the vastness and potential – including all the amazing people you could surround yourself with – will inspire you to make new friends and build a social structure that reinforces the changes you want to make in your life.

In short, you will stop acting in fear because of your narrow viewpoint and start acting with a sense of wonder and possibility because you can see the world is much more dynamic than it used to be. Instead of being trapped into a box, you will see that the world is too large for you to ever understand completely, so will seek to challenge your reality without being encumbered by what other people think or standards of behavior you used to adhere to.

Can Your Problems Magically Change Overnight?

One area where people suffer from ignorance is how you create problems when they don’t really exist. Or, using our new understanding of what is truth, you might choose to see a situation as a problem, where alternative interpretations could see the situation as an opportunity.

No matter how bad a situation is, you always have the choice to see it as something beneficial.

If we take what most people on this planet would consider a pretty bad situation – you’re stricken down with a disease that is going to kill you – even this can be interpreted as something positive. You’re going to die, that means you’re going to find out what it means to be no longer in your body and find out what happens next. This, for a curious person, could be the most exciting adventure ever experienced in life.

Here’s something you have to accept – death is an experience you’re going to go through, so you can suffer this fact, or frame it as something you face with courage, curiosity and a sense of fluidity – you will surrender to it, rather than fight it. The choice is up to you.

If we look at less finite “problems” in life, things like not having enough money, or not having a romantic partner, or wanting to lose weight, or move to a better city, or find a new social circle, or stop feeling depressed, or to quit smoking, or start waking up earlier, or buy a car, or stop being afraid to fly in airplanes, or fall pregnant, or leave your marriage, or become famous, or pretty much any change whatsoever you want to make in your life, the same rules apply.

Every situation above can be looked at as something you are “suffering” from, with the frame of what you stand to lose or what you will never have. Or these things can be completely re-framed as opportunities for new experiences, or as a challenge to find an alternative solution, or even as a point of self-reflection to figure out exactly why you want something so much, or why you fear losing something so much, etc.

Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is in constant flux and the only reason you choose to feel or do something in any given moment is because you choose to, nothing is making you do it. The situation you are in is not the reason you feel as you do, it’s merely a set of circumstances you are choosing to react to in a certain way. If you can’t see a good way to interpret something and a “way out”, then you’re simply addicted to being a certain way – you’re too ignorant of your own behavior and mindset to change. It’s entirely your fault.

Ouch.

That could hurt a little, but I hope you see it as more liberating than painful.

Accepting Change

When I face problems in my life I have benefited from reminding myself of one of life’s constants -

Change is permanent.

I love the dichotomy in that statement. I could have said that change is constant, which is is, but there’s something compelling when you realize the only thing that will never change is change itself.

The practical implication of this understanding further enhances the importance of how you interpret every single moment and thought in your life. Everything is going to change, the situation that you are suffering from right now will not last forever.

Death ensures this. You won’t be lonely forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be married forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be sick forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be young, beautiful, rich, poor, hungry, full, tired, bored, frustrated, angry, bitter, happy, sad, relaxed, excited, joyful, retired, employed, or anything forever, because you are going to die.

Yah, morbid I know. This realization could be about as depressing as it gets, but again – that’s a choice you’re most welcome to make if you like.

I recommend instead that you see death as the greatest reason to always interpret life in a powerful and positive manner, unless of course, you enjoy suffering.

Any problem you have right now doesn’t exist and will disappear, I promise you this with a 100% guarantee. It will change – and to relax a little after all that talk of death, many of the changes you want in life will occur while you are alive. You don’t have to die to rid yourself of your problems, you can do it right now.

Practical Problem Solving

Problem solving begins with first understanding what your problem is really about. I hope, by reading this article to this point, you understand that your problems aren’t really as severe as they are, or really aren’t problems at all.

If you have previously focused energy on what you don’t have and don’t like, it’s time to change that to focusing on what you are doing to make the change you want happen.

You now have the power to never again suffer from your own ignorance. Open your mind to possibility and opportunity and get excited about all the positive changes you could experience in your life in the very near future.

With this new found mindset, the next step is to take the appropriate actions that lead to your desired goals. To make this as practical as possible, here’s a process that can lead you to any change you want to make happen in your life. Remember to apply everything you learned in this article, and the previous in this series, as you go about creating positive change in your life.

1. Start “looking for doors” that will lead you to your goal
2. Once you find the doors, open them
3. Evaluate what you find inside and decide which path to follow further
4. Once you follow a path, focus on dynamic refinement of the process until you achieve your desired outcome (remember that everything can change, including your desired outcome).
5. Accept that you can’t know everything or be everything within the confines of your physical body and mind, so narrow your focus to objective problem solving based on what’s in front of you

While you go through this process, keep in mind your view of the world, including your insights and your ignorances, are helping and hindering your progress. The more you increase your awareness and decrease your ignorance, the easier your life will be and the less friction you will face as you make change.

Coming Up Next – Understanding Your Power As A Change Catalyst

In the next and final chapter in my series on positive change, I’m going to tie in everything you’ve learned so far and leave you with I believe is the single most important insight you can gain from this series.

While everything I’ve talked about so far has been about you helping yourself, you obviously don’t exist in isolation. There is an entire universe that is influencing you, but perhaps more importantly, you are influencing it.

You’re going to see that it’s not just for your own benefit that you need to adopt these positive change principles. It goes much deeper than that.

I’ll give you the final piece of the puzzle very soon…

Yaro Starak
Dissecting Truth

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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

It’s been a wild last ten years for the music industry. The old big record labels clearly messed up, and instead of embracing change, tried to hold on to their old ways of doing things.

You can’t blame them of course, why wouldn’t you want to keep using the system that had poured billions of dollars in profits to them ever since the days of vinyl and the 8-track. Clearly stubborn greed won out over smart leadership during times of revolution.

Unfortunately as a result of a rigid thinking process, rather than being innovative and leading the industry through a period of change, which couldn’t be stopped – it was a revolution of how music is distributed – the big labels decided to fight it.

Taking actions like attacking customers, using the courts to sue certain unlucky members of the public, hoping it would act as a statement to discourage others from “stealing music”, is like biting the hand that feeds you. Sure you don’t want to encourage people to steal music, but if your deterrent is a slap on the wrist, that’s not good enough, you’re not addressing the core change occurring.

You need alternatives that offer innovative methods to consume music where everyone wins, that are as easy or even easier than the options available to download illegally.

Nothing really good surfaced until iTunes came along, which has gained some traction as a viable and legal method to distribute music with profit, thanks in no small part to the incredible adoption rate of the iPod.

It’s fair to say that in many ways Apple’s ingenuity has led them to become market leaders because no one else stepped up with a good enough alternative, plus they managed to convince the major players to support it.

If you look at how Apple has married their hardware and software, making one so dependent on the other, with a heavy dosage of cool factor marketing to convince the masses to take part, you begin to see how truly genius they really are.

Not everyone uses iTunes and fewer still make a purchase from the service. I feel confident saying that the majority of music listeners on this planet now purchase less music than they used to, largely in part to the relative ease of access to any genre you could possible enjoy thanks to websites like YouTube or niche specific music websites and podcasts.

So if so many people are enjoying music for free, on demand, whenever they want, how are musicians going to make a living from what they do? And what about the music labels? The Internet allows direct access to artists without the need for middle-man marketing and distribution services, so where exactly is going to happen to the music industry?

The Web Is Not The New Radio

Although I wasn’t alive at the introduction of the radio, I can only imagine that the idea of broadcasting music for free could have been upsetting to some business people.

Eventually everyone realized that the radio meant exposure, and because you can’t decide what tracks the radio plays, you still head out and buy that tape or CD of your favorite song or artist album, so you can decide when and what you listen to.

The radio turned into a marketing channel that led to an increase in sales. Landing air time on enough radio stations could make or break a band.

Television had a similar impact, and thanks to MTV, the music industry had yet another means of marketing their product. Once again, the music-listener could not dictate what was played and when it was played. Music videos on TV, like radio creating awareness and excitement about certain artists lucky enough to get air time, was more like a sample sized helping for the music fan. To enjoy a full music meal, you have to go out and spend some money to buy a record.

The Internet, though comparable to the television and radio as a new form of music distribution lacks one key ingredient, or should I say, restriction.

Content on the web can be time-shifted, stored, shared and consumed at will. There are no restrictions, you can press play over and over again on your favorite track or watch your favorite music video again and again.

Making things potentially even worse for the record labels, but way better for music fans, thanks to the infinite scale of the Web, ease of use of the technology and low start-up costs, music artists have flooded the medium with content. No longer are we forced to listen to only the top ten, twenty or one hundred tracks based on a mainstream popular vote. Now we can have what we want when we want it and there’s more variety to explore than we could ever hope to in a lifetime.

The music industry now lives in the Long Tail.

Music online is an all-you-can-eat buffet that only costs the price of a device to access the Web and the fees you pay to your Internet provider.

So what’s a record label or music artist to do if no one buys physical music anymore and so much digital music is free?

Exposure Still Counts

Although we’ve gained in the breadth and depth of content – we have more music than we could ever hope for – for a time it became hard to find the good stuff.

We went from having a few options based on what the mainstream or record label execs thought was good, to having so many options that even the most obscure tastes could be met, if you could figure out exactly what the good stuff is.

Then Google came along with its clever algorithms that show us what the majority think is best, even within tiny niches.

Next came social media, with the social-vote acting as the criteria to decide what is good and what isn’t.

Though not completely foolproof, if people vote with their attention and actions, what links they click and how long they spend consuming media, you can use technology to decipher what’s popular, even when presented with near-limitless options.

The end result we have today, is a conglomeration of new media companies, evolving old-media companies, e-commerce, social voting tools, search engines, file sharing and good old word of mouth all driving how music is distributed. It’s complicated, but we’re getting closer to a model that works, and from the point of view of the music fan, there has never been a better time to be alive.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that exposure still counts. If there is one commodity that has become scarce as a result of the technological shift, it is people’s attention spans. As options increase, attention decreases.

The Internet has brought down barriers to distribution, so your every day musician can capture attention for their work, even sitting at home strumming a guitar on their bed. With ideas like “1,000 true fans” demonstrating that you can at least make a living if you can get a loyal following from a small group of people, it could be said that it’s also one of the best times to be a music producer as well.

The music labels still have power because old media still has attention, and there are some things you can only do with the scope of a company behind you. People still watch TV and listen to the radio. Marketing is a multi-faceted function of a music label, with claiming air time on old media as important as building a solid following on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace.

If you want to be a big star, you still need big attention, however as Armada and smart labels like it are realizing, the key to success rests in giving away a lot. Instead of buying exposure in the form of advertising, today you give value for free, and just like us information marketers, record companies and musicians are coming to grips with the idea that selling their music is not necessarily how they are going to profit. Instead they have to give it away.

The Performing Artist

If the music itself is a marketing tool which you give away, how do you profit?

Before I go on, it’s worth stating that I don’t work for a record label and never have, and my musical inclinations are very much on the consuming side of the fence, so what I’m about to write is merely speculation from my business brain.

I like thinking about this especially when I can see a revolution going on in an industry that has contributed some of the most joyful moments to my life – music is transcendent to me. However I’m not privy to the accounting books of any record labels so I don’t know what the real profit centers are, what revenue streams are on the increase and which are in decline.

My gut feeling is that musicians and record labels, like us bloggers, are relying more and more on multiple streams of income, and the highest value product they have, is the face-to-face time they offer. In the case of music, that’s live-gig time, and especially at the very top end of most popular artists, the big cash is made from ticket sales to concerts.

The MP3 may have replaced the CD, but it’s not become nearly as profitable as the small disc, even though the manufacturing cost is so much less. Instead, the MP3, and videos on YouTube are the currency that captures attention, but they are mostly free. They help build the fan base, communicate creativity and are certainly valued highly by the listeners, but since so much of the music is free, it’s not a significant revenue stream.

ITunes is no doubt making millions, but it’s not the profit center that CD sales used to be for the record labels. Plenty of recording artists will never profit from direct sales of their music, which isn’t necessarily new – many a struggling artist has had to keep the day job (or night job) while attempting to “break into” the music industry – the difference now is the profit model has shifted, taking the power away from the labels and into the hands of the people, or at least anyone who can access the Internet to publish music.

Today because it has become so easy to reach people all over the world without the help of a label, and manufacturing paraphernalia to sell is an option to anyone online, smaller musicians can realistically survive.

If a proportion of their 1,000 true fans in each city they visit on tour attend live gigs at bars and clubs, buy a record or two and perhaps some related product like shirts, caps and posters, and combine this with some online sales, maybe some sponsorship income and other promotional opportunities, the artist can make a fairly good living.

At the top end of the scale, today’s leading DJ, or band or singer will leverage all media, both old and new, organized by the music label, though some media, such as twitter, will work best when the artist themselves is in charge of content, rather than an employee. The labels who will thrive in the new environment, are those who innovate by finding new profit channels and understand that online media is not about them losing profits to people stealing music, it’s about cutting marketing costs and finding new audiences around the world using the Web as the most affordable exposure tool ever invented.

Armada Gets It

Bringing this back to Armada Music, if you watch their tracks on YouTube you will notice they include plenty of branding and calls to action to bring a listener into the world of the label.

If you like this track, subscribe to our channel, or check out our website or podcast, or buy tickets to the upcoming gig for this artist, or share this video with your friends. They don’t even mind if you take the track and mix it in to your own podcast or video on YouTube that you give away.

Everything is free, which fosters a frictionless distribution of the music, the artist and the associated brand – Armada. The end result is massive exposure, with a huge global following, leading to sold out gigs all around the world (which are not free).

In my favorite industry, DJs release regular podcasts full of great tunes. Each MP3 podcast is an hour or two hour long mix, full of the latest music, all for free and designed to spread exposure for the DJs featured in the podcast, and the host DJ too of course. Armin Van Buuren runs a live radio show and podcast called A State Of Trance, which apparently has 30 million listeners world wide, which if that is true, makes it one of the most popular shows on the entire planet.

Unfortunately not all labels share the free distribution and sharing of music attitude and will send cease and desist notices if they find you infringing on their copyrighted materials. Is this old thinking or just protecting your assets?

It’s tough to say, but I certainly know what feels right – giving the goods away and asking for nothing but attention of your work.

Leo Babauta of ZenHabits has a very liberal uncopyrighted content policy, where he states –

I think, in most cases, the protectionism that is touted by “anti-piracy” campaigns and lawsuits and lobbying actually hurts the artist. Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing.

If you read his full policy you will see he gives full rights to do whatever you like with his content.

The Free Economy

The web has ushered in an era where free has become the accepted norm. However the Dot Com boom and subsequent bust demonstrated that while giving away things for free is great for audience building, you still need a profitable model behind what you do, if what you are in the business of building a business.

As information publishers, we follow the model of give away so much that people never need to buy from you, but have the option to buy something from you anyway, of which a small proportion will.

The music industry is evolving to a place where the product that used to make them millions is either free, or in the case of a site like BeatPort for DJs, and of course iTunes, you can buy individual tracks for a couple of bucks.

As more and more companies learn to Move The Freeline, the most challenging aspect of what we do online will be about translating your hard work into money. Social media services have huge valuations as companies, but as yet, many of them don’t profit, though they are expected to eventually.

One thing is clear, as consumers we’re enjoying an unprecedented amount of free-ness in our lives, so much so that the challenge is finding the best content to fit into our busy lives. The future, as in the past, will belong to those companies and artists who find a way to bring meaning to our lives, and make enough to survive and thrive financially while doing it.

Yaro Starak
Musically Un-Gifted

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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?

Financial Return Vs. Personal Satisfaction

There’s an interesting thing that happens as your business grows. All early decisions are pretty much focused entirely on establishing cash flow. I know for sure if you’re getting started right now with your online business, your first goal is to generate money.

Momentum at the start-up stage is all about first surviving, then establishing cash flow to stabilize what’s working by bringing on more resources, in particular more people to help. Once cash is stable and you have at least a base level of regular income coming in, your decision making process actually becomes easier in some respects, since you don’t need money quite as desperately. Instead you’re looking to keep things moving along smoothly, keep the growth curve trending up by using your cash to open up the floodgates on what’s already working.

Once you pass through this stage, you can finally breath a little, confident that your business is running reasonably well without risk of falling apart. If you’ve built a money making machine business and have systems and people running things for you, your own workload will drop at this point as well, freeing you up to make decisions on where to go next.

It’s at this point that your decision making process changes. It’s no longer just about the cash, instead you choose projects based on what you want to do. Of course financial objectives are still important, but the feeling of desperation subsides, and you can go somewhat where your heart wants to take you, as well as your wallet.

This is a wonderful position to be in, but don’t be under any illusion that it’s easier, it’s actually more complicated because you have considerably more options to choose from. The downside risk is usually less, depending of course on what level of investment is required of you in new projects, but if you’re a boot-strapping kind of entrepreneur, or building online businesses, the risk is low.

The biggest loss you might have is the time it takes to get a new project off the ground. You could lose money too if your new project doesn’t work, but unless you’re spending significant amounts on advertising or software development, which are not the kind projects I currently focus on, then you really have very little to worry about beyond that sense of disappointment when something doesn’t take off like you hope it would.

Opportunity Cost

The real potential danger in this decision making process is opportunity cost.

Making a decision to focus on one project means you can’t work on another. If the potential upside on a successful project is hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, then choosing one opportunity over another means you could be “risking millions”, though the difference between loosing millions compared to just not making millions because you choose a lame duck project is quite different. It’s still a relatively safe place to be making decisions from.

So that’s basically where Gideon and I find ourselves now. We have plenty of opportunities to make money by starting new projects and optimizing current ones, possibly even selling assets, but cementing what to pursue while a tantalizing choice, is still a difficult one because we forgo one opportunity by choosing another.

We also have to be sure to balance what we want to put energy into with the potential to profit from it carefully. The holy grail is a project that is fun to work on, satisfying on a personal level, and is the most or one of the most profitable. Identifying which opportunities match this criteria is actually very difficult because of the amount of unknowns and the nature of uncharted territory.

The Simple Path To The Lowest Hanging Fruit

The best advice I can offer you, which is the same advice I follow, is to seek the simplest path to the lowest hanging fruit, which represents both a financial and personal reward you are happy with.

By this I mean, choose the opportunities that are simple in nature, which you are clear about how to begin, that you are excited to do, and the numbers are satisfying, if things go well.

This process is going to be different depending on what stage your business is at. As I stated before, the level of momentum, your resources (including staff), and cash flow currently flowing in your business, dictates how much freedom you have to choose projects based on money versus fun. Consider this when deciding what’s important to you and offers quickest return on investment.

In my experience, having one major project going at once, which you work on to completion before starting another, is a successful formula. This gives you clarity of purpose and more importantly, tells you what you definitely shouldn’t be doing (anything that’s not related to that specific project).

In your case you likely have a skill, or talent, or perhaps you’ve built up something to a point where it could be leveraged for more, and you’re reasonably clear on how to start the process, or are at least prepared to put in the time to learn how to make it a profitable venture, which represents a lowest hanging fruit opportunity.

It’s not always a cut and dry decision, and you may need to seek input from your peers, or a coach or mentor, or as I like to do – mull it over for a while so you get a really good feel for how much you want to do something – just not too long!

It also helps to write out your opportunities on a piece of paper and rank them based on criteria like how much money you could make, how much fun it would be, how quickly you could earn a return and how much is your potential loss. Sometimes having this information written down and then put into a graph results in a very obvious winner – the numbers don’t lie if you’re being honest with yourself.

The most important point is, once you’ve made a decision, focus all your energy on that and ignore everything else. If you want to guarantee failure or at best, a very slow path to success, keep distracting yourself with new opportunities.

Good luck with your new projects this year!

Yaro Starak
Brainstorming

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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.

The Emotional Bank Account

I’ve been aware that you need to deliver content and foster trust before asking people to buy since I first started studying Internet marketing. It has been the foundation of my email marketing strategy since day one thanks to guys like Perry Marshall and Eben Pagan. Even still, I’ve probably gone a little excessive with promotions from time to time, if I judge by what really matters, the impact on relationships with my subscribers.

The challenge is to find a balance that works. Perry explains his system in the workshop, demonstrating how he uses autoresponders (that’s automatic follow-up emails using a system like AWeber) as the automated trust building tools, which help him build up enough credit in the emotional bank account, that when it is time to pitch something, he can do so without turning people off.

This really isn’t a difficult concept to grasp, but you have to realize that the ratio of content to pitch is skewing more and more towards content. Content is even more important than you think it is.

Consider a person gives you their name and email because they want to read your report on how to improve your putting game in golf. Following the email that gives the report, the next day you send them an email that asks them to buy a putter your recommend (through your affiliate link of course). Then you ask them to buy golf balls (affiliate link), then a manual on how to chip out of bunkers (affiliate link), then something else.

Your subscriber may have tolerance for one or two pitches especially since they are related to the reason she first subscribed, but by the fifth email they’re starting to wonder why they should keep their relationship with you if all you ever do is show them things they can buy.

Instead, imagine if the emails that follow the report include a free video showing a tip on how to hold a putter correctly, then a free interview with a professional golf coach who explains what most amateur golfers do wrong with their putting. The next email gives a great story from the game of golf you played on the weekend, which relates how you learned a special way of thinking to improve concentration during putting.

Think of it this way. Trust, which is an emotion, starts at zero in the emotional bank account (maybe even negative in markets that have a reputation for scamming people). Each time you help your subscriber without asking anything from them, they trust you more – and that’s a deposit. Each time you include a pitch that requires they spend their money, you’re subtracting from that bank account.

Obviously there are subtleties and ways you can pitch with content, but the base rule is clear because we all know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of an email that asks you to buy something. It’s not usually something that makes you like the person who sent you the email.

Keep It Personal

One of the great lessons Perry teaches, and demonstrates in his workshop, is the power of story telling and using personal anecdotes to further enhance the emotional connection you have with your subscribers.

I swear half of Perry’s presentations in the workshop are simply stories from his life and running his business! (there’s a lesson in that in terms of how to create content for live events too).

Every person who subscribes to your list is there for a different reason and has a different level of interest in you. Some just want your free stuff and may never become a customer. On the other end of the spectrum are those who buy everything you produce and want to know about everything going on in your life, even beyond your business.

The emphasis should be placed on your core “groupies”, those who see you as a trusted source of reliable information and even as a friend. This group is not significant in number, but they are significant in how they support your business. This is the very top of the 80/20 rule – we’re talking about the 0.1% of people who provide 80% or more of your revenue.

If you demonstrate your “humanness” then more people will come to like you as a human, and this is by far the strongest selling technique you could ever master. Now imagine your email sequence does that for you automatically.

It’s logical stuff, but unfortunately so many people are stuck on short term gain mode, or just plain desperate to make money, they forget they are dealing with other human beings at the end of their emails.

What Has To Change

Here’s what I’m doing differently this year –

• You won’t see me promoting nearly as many launches. I will still promote affiliate products, but far fewer. I like to support people who support me, so I will promote quality products from quality marketers who’ve demonstrated their value and competency, but the volume is going to decrease.
• Most of the “pitch” emails I will send are going to be about projects I’m directly involved in, either as the creator of the product, or an event I’m running. For example, this year I have a private coaching program coming next, a live event and more training products that I’ll be creating with Gideon Shalwick.
• Making these changes is a deliberate step to tighten up my sales funnel. Previously I haven’t had as tight a focus in my lists as I’d like. This is another lesson Perry taught, focusing each email list on a very specific purpose. In the past I’ve focused on broadcasting every message to all my subscribers, this year, the content is going to be tailored and thus segmented so my subscribers get more of what they want based on what they subscribed for.
• You’re going to get more emails from me that are purely quality training and advice. I’ve always felt best sending an email that simply exists to help people (or directing you to content that exists purely to help) without asking for anything other than your attention.
• Although my subscribers won’t be overtly aware of it, behind the scenes I’ll be rejigging the sequence of my autoresponders to better reflect my new focus. Once set up, I’ll have an even better machine that runs automatically, so I can spend my time on new projects.

In order to realize my big picture goals I need new products, so I definitely plan on expanding out what I teach this year. Although Gideon and I have plans to release low priced, very specific training products that teach our core competencies, I’ll be spending a lot of time working on high-end product that help my top members and clients.

I want to spend more time working with my core followers, who are willing to invest more money for tailored support AND who are in a position to really leverage my advice and build very successful businesses of their own.

As much as I love all my customers, I really love the action takers and get immense satisfaction from seeing people get results. I want to offer more support to this minority to help them achieve more, so if that’s you, stay tuned – we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other this year .

All these goals are dependent on my email system, which is a condition all Internet entrepreneurs must become acutely aware of – your email lists are your business.

If you’re not thinking about how to use email marketing in your business, then your focus is in the wrong place. Email marketing should always be a priority because it’s your best source of leverage, your strongest tool for relationship building and thanks to autoresponders, one of the most powerful automation tools available today.

What If I Pitch To You Now?

So we’re at the end of this article. It’s safe to say that I recommend Perry Marshall (in fact it was his ebook that was the very first affiliate product I promoted on this blog), however what would happen now if I overtly recommended you buy his Live Autoresponder Workshop product?

I could leave this article, which already has a handful of links to the workshop and not blatantly suggest you buy it. If I do that, most people will see this article as a good piece of content that teaches some advanced ideas and fundamentals about email marketing and business development. A very small percentage might even purchase the product without my overt prompting.

If I add a sales pitch now, some people will look at the content in this article as merely one long build up of marketing to sell Perry’s product with my affiliate link. They could be justified in labeling this content just me selling something to make money, especially if they scanned the article and hit the end only to find the pitch (and remember most people scan content, they don’t read it). I may sell more product this way short term, though it’s difficult to say for sure.

What’s clear is that much of this is a personal choice in how you want to run your business. Some think selling in every email is fine and if people unsubscribe, they’re not buyers, so it’s good they’re off your list. Others focus on trust building and believe that long term success depends on fostering relationships with quality content. If you’re focusing too much on selling, then you’re slowly destroying your business because you’re destroying trust.

Perry, more than any other marketer, is a consistent demonstration of how to focus on building your business, without selling himself short with excessive pitch. He’s not perfect and of course all of this is subjective, but I can state from my point of view I’ve always admired his endurance, his lack of affiliate pitches, his strength saying no to most product launches, and his authenticity and transparency. Plus, he has built a really solid online business based on trust in a market full of hucksters.

In 2010, his model is what I’m looking to emulate more than any other marketer.

Yaro Starak
Email Marketer

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This is the first chance I’ve had to get some laptop time in the past three days because I’ve attended a wedding of a high-school friend. What made the wedding unique is because it was an Indian wedding, which means it’s a big occasion, with over 250 people showing up at different ceremonies, held over three days.

Melbourne is a great city, my second favorite in Australia after my hometown of Brisbane. I love the trams, and although the weather is a bit unpredictable, I like how much cooler it is compared to Brisbane. It’s like Brisbane winter temperatures in summer at night in Melbourne – that means long pants and no sweating, a welcome relief from what has been a hot summer in Brisbane so far. Most of the biggest events come to Melbourne, including the Australian Open tennis, my favorite tournament of the year.

The wedding has been an amazing experience, with such a variety of ceremonies, including traditional Indian customs, food, dancing and clothing. I have a small family, so seeing such a massive group of people come together essentially just for two people, along with all the emotions involved, is at times overwhelming, yet an inspiring experience too.

If you want to see photos from the wedding I’ve tweeted a few of them, so just check out my Twitter profile for the links. And if you’re reading this – a big thank you to Venkatesh and Nishi for the invite to your wedding, and congratulations again.

The Year That Was

Now that the wedding is over I’m back to the real world, thinking about what’s coming next in my life. No doubt you’re thinking about what’s coming up for you in 2010 as well.

This is the last blog post I’m going to write this year, actually – this decade. That makes it a great time for reflection.

In 2009 I turned 30, and celebrated that milestone on this blog with a reflective blog post looking back over the last ten years of my life. You can read it here -

How To Become Comfortable With Yourself

Since I’ve already covered the highlights of the last decade, and this blog is a chronicle of the last five years of my life, I’m going to focus now only on the year that was and also what’s coming up next.

Looking at small time-frames works a lot better for me. I don’t make five year plans. I don’t even make one year plans. I do look to the past to help me frame my future intentions, however they serve more as learning tools and reference points for what I want now more than anything else.

2009 has been a particularly inspiring year for me because I realized how completely in control of my reality I am. Sure I’ve understood that idea long before this year, but it was more a concept to me, something that made sense but didn’t always manifest exactly how I would expect it to if I was in control. In 2009, especially now in December as I look back, I realize this year more than any other year, was a reflection of what I wanted to experience and thus made physical.

The Law Of Attraction

Earlier in the month I attended a live one day seminar by Jerry and Esther Hicks, who you may know as major players in the movement that is the law of attraction. The Secret DVD featured a lot of content from them, though I should clarify, it’s not specifically these two people who teach, it’s an entity named Abraham, who speaks through Esther, who does the teaching.

If you’re skeptical when you hear the idea of someone “channeling” another being, I don’t blame you, I’ve felt similar judgments in the past, although it’s not such a big deal for me any more. I don’t care where people say information comes from, we just put labels on things to give different meaning. Whether it’s experts, channeled entities, or even god who is speaking to you, it’s all the same thing. Listen to the message, not the messenger, and if it resonates, take it on board.

If you need the messenger to help lend credibility, that’s fine, just don’t be too quick to judge before you listen to the words. Far too many people miss out on potentially life changing insights because they refuse to take on ideas simply because of where the information is coming from. If something challenges your way of thinking, don’t reject it on principle, keep your eyes and mind open, listen to the words, see how what is being said can fit into your world view, and grow from there. You don’t have to like or even trust the messenger, to benefit from the message.

Setting Intentions

Seeing Abraham speak live on stage was a great experience. However it was the days that followed the event that I realized I had turned a corner in my ability to control what happens in my life.

What was interesting about this awareness was not that I suddenly could manifest whatever I wanted, it was that I had already done it – and in this case, manipulated aspects of my life that I previously struggled to change. I’m talking about aspects of my personality and life that had remained rigid for years, which in the space of months had completely changed, and it was all thanks to what I was thinking, the actions I was taking as a result and what thus manifested in my physical world.

Since we are reflecting, it’s worth taking a moment now to look back over the previous 12 months of your life and ask yourself these questions -

1. In January, what where your big goals, the big changes you wanted to experience in 2009?
2. Regarding the big changes, how did you think about them – what was your attitude and thought patterns about what you wanted, and how consistent was your thinking?
3. What actions did you take to realize these changes? Where your actions congruent with your thoughts and how resilient were you to perceived setbacks?
4. Did you get what you wanted by the end of the year? How quickly could you manifest what you wanted?

In previous years the gap of time between desiring something and experiencing it has been quite significant for me. It could take years to get what I wanted and it often wasn’t exactly how I expected it to be. Although you’re never sure what you are going to get, I’ve found lately, this year in particular, the speed of results and the accuracy of getting what I’ve wanted, has improved significantly.

What Made A Difference?

Below are adjustments to my life and my mindset that I made this year, which I consider most responsible for the significant shift in results I’ve experienced.

• Remove your roadblocks. By choice and often in full awareness, I’ve carried roadblocks with me for years, which stop me from moving forward. This year plenty of roadblocks were eliminated. These changes required instilling new behaviors that often required facing fears. Sometimes I had to make choices not to do something I would have previously done.

  The Theory of Constraints applies here. If you have something holding you back, you’re not going to move until you drop the baggage. Letting go of something is mandatory to make space for what you want.

• Solidify your belief in the power of intentions. Although I’m open minded enough to believe that I can get what I want and the universe will even conspire to help me, it has been more conceptual for me than practical.

  This year I started to believe, and I mean really believe. Consequently I started to see proof everywhere. Now I’m such a strong believer that I find myself just asking for how I want something to play out and everything unfolds pretty much that way. It’s not foolproof of course, the universe loves to remind you that mystery is still the guiding principle, but you have more power than you think you do, once you believe you do.

  There’s a sense of inevitability in believing in what you ask for you will get, but it has to be pure or you’re going to get results as wavering as your belief.

• Mystery is in control, so flow with it. Although you’re given power over your universe, the underlying force behind everything is too complex for us to understand given the limitations of our physical experience. In other words, your body and mind aren’t complete tools for interpreting the universe – most of what goes on is incomprehensible in physical form. As a result, it’s important that you surrender to the flow of events rather than try and control them.

  This might sound counter intuitive to what I’ve been saying. If setting intentions and believing in your power to control outcomes results in getting what you want, how can I now say that we are not in control? That’s one of those wonderful dichotomies we operate within.

  We have control in the sense that we can move towards what we want, but we have to understand that we can’t force it to come to us. Flow is absolutely critical. This is why it’s so important to live in the now, be content with what you have, work within your current reality and follow the natural pull of things. Acceptance is vital.

That last point is so critical I can’t emphasize it enough. As I’ve grown up I’ve often “fought” for what I thought I wanted. It has felt like a struggle, as if I’m in battle, beating away rejections until I find what I want. This is the wrong way to go about things because you can’t get what you want by fighting against the universe.

I used to hate the expression that you only get what you want when you stop looking so hard for it. I hated it because I knew it was true, but felt helpless in my ability not to respond emotionally to NOT having it. I was upset, depressed, sad, angry and above all else, frustrated, because I wanted something so badly, yet seemed unable to make it a reality.

Living with intention rather than fighting with life is the way to go. Let your life play out by following the sign-posts that flow to you when you’re open to seeing them, rather than fight and struggle only to find one frustration opening a door of more frustrations. If you’re not having fun, then you’re doing something wrong.

What Exactly Did I Want In 2009?

Some of this might sound a bit abstract to you since I haven’t been very specific with what exactly I wanted 2009 to be about for me.

At the start of the year you may recall I wrote how many of my financial goals were met. I spent the majority of 2008 traveling, so I felt that staying put in my home city was what I wanted to do this year. As much as I like traveling, I enjoy staying in one place more as I can focus my energy on doing exactly what I want and not be distracted by organizing the next hotel, flight, train-trip or site-seeing experience.

Sleeping in my own bed is also one of the most wonderful pleasures, so I was keen to make that the standard for the year, rather than the exception.

Many doors opened up to start new business projects during the first half of 2009, which were potentially very lucrative. The problem was that I didn’t want to focus on projects that while no doubt would be fun, were building upon an aspect of my life I felt was running quite smoothly.

I made choices this year to NOT do things that most people would think I was crazy to reject. I said no to doing a live event joint venture that would most likely have led to making multiple six figures – even a million dollars – from just one weekend.

I decided not to offer a high-end coaching program in 2009, which again was saying no to thousands of dollars of potential income. I will be offering elite coaching in 2010, now that I feel well and truly ready to focus on it, however it’s clear to me that in 2009 I made the right decision not to.

In short, 2009 in terms of business was sort of like a holiday, which is what I intended. I did go public with a new course, Membership Site Mastermind, which sold very well and is still the highest priced program I have out there. Blog Mastermind continued to sell well. Gideon and I had another very successful launch campaign for Become A Blogger Premium. My affiliate marketing efforts brought in more money in 2009 than all previous years, despite the so called global financial crisis, and of course my blog continued along a healthy growth curve.

This may sound like a lot of work, but it’s actually not. It’s incredibly easy, in fact 2009 was probably the easiest year of my life, the most fun year of my life and no doubt the most financially successful year of my life too. It was like this because I constructed it that way.

Most of the income I made in 2009 came from the money making machine I’ve built. I leveraged previous work to extract a high return from the assets I already own. Such a great return that I was able to purchase a new apartment and new BMW this year, despite working less.

So, if I was happy with my finances and business growth, what did I want to do with the rest of my time?

The one big area of my life I felt that was lacking and needed development was my social life. I said no to starting many new business projects so I could spend my time figuring out exactly what I wanted outside of business.

I honestly believe that your personal development is the single most important goal you have as a human being, which is an incredibly holistic undertaken, given how many aspects make up our lives. We all know this and we all know we have areas that are weaker than others. If you’re not physically healthy, you know it. If you’re financially restricted, you definitely know it. If you’re not creatively inspired you know it.

Your spiritual development is perhaps the most important aspect, yet is often the area people are not aware they need to develop. In my case, that’s not an area I felt I was neglecting – it’s an ongoing life study for me, something I do every day.

The area I felt lacking the most was in relationships – of all kinds. This was the area that I wanted to focus on in 2009. This is the reason why I said no to projects. This is the part of my life that most of my new intentions focused on in 2009.

Constructing A Social Circle

I’m a reasonably content person when I’m by myself and as an introvert I crave alone time, but I’m human, so I need interaction with other humans too.

In 2009, although I didn’t exactly realize how it would unfold, I managed to create an entirely new social circle. I made more new friends, had more intimate relationships and most importantly – had more fun with other people – than ever before.

I started the year intending to have certain experiences and work on the aspects of my self that would lead to those experiences. Although I didn’t realize it always in the moment, when I look back, it’s amazing how the right people came along at the right time to give me the tools to achieve what I wanted.

Although I was frustrated many times during the year when I hit roadblocks and felt I was still experiencing the same lack of results in certain areas that I had throughout my life, or stopped myself because of the same fears, gradually things changed. This month, the last of the year, as I look back, I’m amazed that exactly what I wanted 2009 to be about – happened. I experienced what I wanted, and learned more things about myself than ever before.

Of course experiencing what I wanted inevitably led to changes to what I want. That’s the beautiful thing about taking action – you always learn something, often creating an awareness that what you thought you wanted is not what you wanted, or after experiencing something, realizing that you had made that experienced out to be something more than it actually is. The important thing is that growth occurs, and for me, 2009 was a mammoth year for personal growth.

Right now there are very few aspects of my life I feel insecure about. Yes there are challenges and the same old fears are present, but having faced these challenges and fears, they now have less power over me and have allowed me to “dream bigger” about what I want from life. You can’t ask for more than that, and I’m looking forward to more growth in the years to come.

Find Your Life Balance

For the first time in my life I feel well and truly balanced and content with who I am. It’s been a VERY long journey to get here, and finding the right mix of all the different elements is tough.

It’s so easy to keep doing what’s working for you, or what requires the least of you, but that’s rarely the path of satisfaction. Leaving your comfort zone is a required practice for growth, and as part of that growth process, you come to appreciate even more what you already know you like.

In a wonderful way, the experience of evolving and growing, makes you enjoy your existing passions even more, because you realize they are what matter most.

In 2009 I’ve loved music more than I have ever loved music before. I’ve enjoyed writing this blog and teaching other people more than ever before. I’ve enjoyed the people in our industry, and the gift of freedom as an Internet marketer we experience every day, more than ever before. I’ve enjoyed learning from other people, in particular spiritual insights, more than ever before. Everything has just become that much more fun, enlightening and special, because I’m not fighting to feel a certain way, or looking to find something I feel I am missing.

There’s much more to do yet, but what I do know for sure is that my future is about two things -

1. Enjoying more of who I am
2. Helping others to find enjoyment in who they are

And if you look closely, you realize these two things are actually the same thing.

Happy new year, and I’ll see you in 2010.

Yaro Starak
Actualizing

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The first big spike in growth occurred in 2007, which was the first launch I ever did of the Blog Mastermind coaching program. Every aspect of my business grew during that two week period. My email list tripled in size and my income increased by almost the same margin.

Going forward, each new spike came thanks to some kind of launch. Whether it was a new product, closing access to a product or reopening of a closed product, each time I did some kind of launch campaign, the growth numbers shot through the roof.

This is obviously an endorsement of the launch process, and we all owe Jeff Walker a debt of thanks for bringing this style of marketing to our industry, however it’s worth taking a closer look at why the launch works.

The 80/20 Rule Of Product Launches

The launch process is a complex and subtle beast, which on the surface appears relatively simple. You release some great free stuff, have your affiliates promote it like crazy, open the doors to your offer with some kind of limitation, sell heaps, make a ton of money, and bamb!… done.

Once you do a few launches you start to see how intricate the variables are, and how important the psychology behind the process is. Everything needs to connect, to be coherent, to reinforce the same message, create excitement and flow together.

As daunting as that might sound, the process is actually quite forgiving, as long as you get a few variables right. You can “stuff up” many aspects of the launch process and still succeed. You can forget to do things, use lazy copy in your emails, and even leave parts out altogether, as long as you have the most important variables.

So, what are the 20% or less of components that go into a launch that count for the 80% or more of results? Here’s how I see it…

• Your lead resource(s), or “money magnets” as Frank Kern calls them – whatever you give away for free that sets the tone and the main focus of your launch, and demonstrates your value. This part is absolutely critical if you want your message to spread since it is key to the viral aspect of your marketing. The more valuable your resource, the more people will share it and talk about it. Your affiliates also need your lead resource to promote your launch so they can give their people something valuable and not just force a direct sales pitch.
• A means of distribution is critical, which should be obvious since you can’t sell something when you don’t have an audience to sell it to. For most people distribution is a combination of your existing audience on your email list, who read your blog and subscribes to your RSS feed, your Facebook and Twitter followers, and any other people you can directly contact who are actively listening to your messages and are targeted to your offer.

That’s really all there is to it.

If you have a great free report, a great product, an email list of targeted prospects, and/or top affiliates ready to promote for you, everything else is simply the grease that keeps the machine running. Yes you need relationships with your prospects, but often you can build this during the launch – in fact your lead resource can be all you need to build the trust and authority required to make people feel safe buying from you.

Your copywriting, particularly in emails, is important, as is how you sell your final pitch (sales page or sales video), however you can screw up this part and still have a killer launch, if you just have something of value to give to people and a means to distribute that value.

Where People Go Wrong

Based on work with my members, the greatest challenge to having a successful product launch seems to come from the following areas -

• A lack of distribution. This is by far the biggest problem because most people don’t realize how many subscribers or the type of subscribers they need to succeed. That’s completely to be expected of course, you can’t know the answer to how much distribution you really need until you launch.

  I addressed this problem and offered some basic metrics to use as guidelines in this article, which is well worth a read if you’re getting close to launching your first product –

  When Is The Right Time To Launch Your Product?

• A mis-aligned offer. This is another challenging issue because you don’t really know for sure you have the right offer until you sell what you have to sell. Worse still, you might have a fantastic product, a great lead resource and then use just one or two phrases that aren’t what your audience wants to hear, and boom, launch failure.

  Understanding your audience and explicitly knowing what their core motivations are is absolutely critical. To help you become clearer about how well you need to know your audience, read this article –

  How Well Do You Know Your Customer?

Most people get hung up with what is in their product or how to deliver their product or how much to charge for it. All these things are important, but without an offer people actually want and a way to get in front of those people, all other variables are a moot point.

How To Generate Massive Growth

There are many ways to grow something online, and as successful bloggers do oh-so-well, the slow but sure path can take you to amazing places, given enough time and effort.

I’m all for that, however it’s nice to experience rapid growth spikes too, which is something successful Internet marketers really understand well.

As I discussed in – Who Makes More Money – Authors, Bloggers or Internet Marketers? – finding a synergistic approach that combines the advantages of blogging, with the leverage points of traditional Internet marketing, is a great formula. This is what I strive for.

Now, let’s answer that burning question – what is the key to rapid growth? The answer in my case lies within the launch process.

The “easy” part of doing a launch is all the variables you can control. I say it’s “easy” because it really isn’t – it’s hard work – however because you control it, you know you can get a result simply by just getting things done. I’m talking about the components of what is in your product, what you write in the emails you send out, what goes into your lead resource, what you write on your blog to market it, etc. These things take work, but they are a function of you and only you.

It’s clear how important distribution is. The launch process, when done completely, includes a vital variable – your affiliates. Your affiliates are the key to experience rapid growth, because it is your affiliates who give you access to new sources of distribution. Affiliates also happen to be the variable you have the least control over.

If you work hard, you can confidently execute all the variables under your control. You might even have a fat list or huge blog readership already established to market to, but if you’re just selling to the same people it can be difficult to grow your business quickly (you can certainly improve your average customer value though). That’s okay of course, you can make great money selling to your existing prospects and customers, and there are ways to grow profits quickly using your existing audience, but if you don’t have much of an existing audience, affiliates you get there much quicker.

If you’re just starting out affiliates can be the super-boost you need to grow your business rapidly. Even just one or two successful launches is enough to establish six or even seven figure businesses. What’s even better, once you’ve done some launches and built up your list, your reliance on affiliates decreases. You can run your business relying more on the variables you can control (your own list) and less on what you can’t (your affiliates).

How You Can Tap Into Affiliates As A Source Of Leverage

Let’s start with some basic techniques first. Here are some practical ways to find affiliates…

1. Write a blog post and email to your newsletter inviting people to join your affiliate program
2. Contact other bloggers and internet marketers in your niche and ask them to promote your product
3. Search forums for quality people who sound like they have a successful business and ask them to promote
4. Tap into networks like Clickbank, Commission Junction, PayDotCom, etc to either find affiliates or act as brokers to find affiliates for you
5. Ask your existing affiliates to introduce you to potential new affiliates

I could go on and on with little tips like these. These techniques work, but what I see over and over again is advice like this and people not getting results.

I think part of the reason why is the hard work that is required to use these techniques. There can be a lot of manual labor involved, sending lots of emails, spending time in forums, and so on. However I think the real problem is an attitude that has come about because people believe in order to get the big affiliates to promote for you, you need to be a “big player” yourself. A catch-22 situation.

If you’re new to an industry and you email someone of significance in your market asking for a potential joint venture, chances are they won’t reply or will say no to promoting your product. If that happens often enough, you get jaded.

Let me state a fact, a hard truth that everyone has to accept when it comes to affiliates and joint ventures. If you want someone to promote your product you need to be deserving of that reward.

You need to ask yourself – why would this person want to promote your product in the first place?

Try and get in their shoes. You might offer hefty commissions, promise great conversion rates, offer prizes, incentives – but if you’re talking to the big players they don’t need these things. They’re already successful, they don’t use money or material items as their currency anymore, and they have their own stuff to promote, their own content to publish, and established agreements already in place to promote other products. You’re just an annoying distraction stopping them from getting what they want to get done, done.

Ok, it’s not quite that bad. I have some advice for you coming up next if you want the support of the “big player” affiliates, but as an introduction I really recommend you read this first – How Not To Approach A Potential Joint Venture Partner

How To Join The Inner Circle Of Top Affiliates

As I was growing up as a blogger and eventually released my own products I didn’t think twice about whether I could or could not convince people to promote for me.

I wasn’t oblivious to the effectiveness of affiliates, I simply knew that when it was time, the right relationships would be there. I was confident because I had already, and was continuing to demonstrate why a person would want to work with me.

This is like the difference between cold calling to get customers versus them coming to you already wanting to work with you because of your established reputation.

And there’s the answer… Did you miss it?

To gain access to top affiliates you need to do something to deserve it. Yes relationships are critical, but relationships at the top level often start first based on reputation.

Even if a potential partner has never heard of you before, having some form of demonstrable proof that you’re the real deal and not just looking to make a buck off of their list – in other words, it is worth knowing you beyond just the potential to profit from sales of your product – is the real secret.

So how can you obtain a reputation that opens doors to relationships to the best people in your industry? Here’s some ideas that have worked for me and many other people.

• Start a blog and grow it into something special. Just having a blog with a nice design, some good content and a small following is not enough. You need to be a trailblazer, a thought leader, a maven – someone with meaning and attention in the minds of a significant proportion of people.
• Capture a following and prove that you can move people to action. I know plenty of bloggers who appear on the surface to be significant players, speaking at events, maybe even publishing books and showing nice email subscriber, RSS and Twitter numbers, yet when push comes to shove – when it was time to deliver and demonstrate a result – they had very little power to actually move their audience to action. It’s great to have people who pay attention to your stuff, but if a significant proportion of them don’t respond to calls to action, then you can’t make an impression that counts.
• Publish a book or report and make it a hit. Writing a book today is easier than ever before and thus the mantle of “published author”, while definitely a credibility boost, is not as big a deal as it once was. Creating a free report is even easier. However, if your publication becomes a hit, if it dominates the conversation in your market for a period of time, or redefines how people look at an issue, or is referred to as fundamental study, then you’ve gained a reputation that can last a lifetime.
• Use the top-down method to become credible by association. What I mean by this is enter a market with completely new ideas based on your previous experience, then offer to teach your ideas to some of the heavy hitters in your industry. You don’t have to go straight to the mass market with your best stuff, just take a small group on, refine what you know and really blow them away, and then when it comes time to go mainstream your initial group of students will be more than happy to promote you and recommend you to other top affiliates. Presenting at an event and selling private coaching is a good method to attempt this technique, but bear in mind you do have to be the real deal – you better know something of ground breaking value.
• Leverage your past success stories. Can you imagine if the guy who started eBay, or Flikr, or Twitter, or any number of significant web presences came to you with a JV offer – you’d listen, because their previous success demands your attention. If you’ve had a past life where you have achieved something, use it as a leverage point to open doors.
• Locate your peers who show promise and start working with them before they become famous. This is a technique I benefited from tremendously with my own launch because I “grew up” as a blogger during the same time my fellow bloggers Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, John Chow, Jeremy Schoemaker and Daniel Scocco did. During the years that our market matured, our blogs matured and our relationships with each other matured. Even if we don’t communicate often, we all know each other, respect each others work and have a direct line of contact, so if we need to propose something we know it will at least be considered. This technique can be tricky and works best in emerging markets, but don’t let that stop you – even if you find one good person today, they might be your top affiliate next year as their reach expands.
• Be a good affiliate yourself. This solution is probably the hardest, since if you can make a lot of affiliate sales for someone else, you’re likely established already, however it is worth mentioning as you might find yourself knowing some solid techniques to make affiliate sales, but no one knows who you are…yet. James Schramko comes to mind as a great example of a guy who figured out some really clever ways to make a lot of affiliate product sales for other marketers, who instantly paid attention to him because of it, thus he had a door into the inner circle.

There are other methods to tap into the top echelon of affiliate marketing circles, but these ideas should get you started. None of these techniques are quick fixes. If you want a reputation, credibility, respect and the networking advantages that lead to top affiliates taking notice of you, you need to work at it to demonstrate your worthiness for these benefits.

Don’t Assume You Have Respect

One last very important point – you shouldn’t ever assume anything is a guarantee. Just because you’ve written a best seller, don’t email someone out of the blue and expect them to know who you are. Don’t push a free report, or your blog, or your new book, or access to your course and expect that person to instantly drop everything and check out your work, simply because you think it’s the greatest stuff since sliced bread.

If possible an introduction from a person who already knows the person you are looking to connect with is a much safer way in. I’ve found that people come to me through the natural course of networking. You tend to find the right people, especially after you set out an intention to do so, when the time is right.

It’s even better when some of your work ends up as the study materials, or even manages to help and inspire a person you want to connect with. In this case they may come to you first after being so impressed by your work. This is why the next point is absolutely critical – it’s the most important lesson in this whole article…

I hope this article has helped you feel a better sense of clarity about how affiliate marketing works at top levels. It’s not a cut and dry subject as you are dealing with the most varied variable of all – other people – which is why that last point on no expectations is so critical.

Good luck!

Yaro Starak
Inside The Circle

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I’m a fence sitter. This can at times be a hindrance, but if balanced well, it’s an advantage.

What I mean by this is I don’t 100% commit to a point of view. I have a point of view, but it’s not so rigid that I will default to it without being capable of seeing other points of view.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. No doubt thanks to learned behaviors and pure animal instinct, I do default to certain behaviors in given circumstances, but for the sake of this article let’s focus on issues that we can consciously make a decision about using our awareness. These are areas of our lives that are open to interpretation.

My fence sitting stems from an understanding that everyone sees the world through different glasses. We all perceive things differently, and in our own minds we make choices based on how we see things at the time. There is no right or wrong, only perception and choice, which is how we drive our entire lives.

Since you can’t share someone else’s physical experience (you can’t borrow their senses or mind and see what is it like to “be” them), you have to go with your own perception, which unfortunately can be very dangerous if you start to form rigid belief structures.

Are You Open Minded?

Most people, especially in liberal cultures gifted with plenty of freedom, like to think of themselves as open minded. You likely feel the same, saving your judgments until you’ve had a chance to weigh up the options, opinions and data until you feel comfortable enough to make a decision.

Open mindedness is good, however it can slow you down. If you’re willing to assess information before making a conclusion, you have to invest time and energy into the process. Sometimes there just isn’t enough time to do this and that’s when intuition and experience, or as Malcolm Gladwell calls it – a Blink moment – comes in handy.

A Blink moment refers to the ability of the mind to process data at instantaneous speed, forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion in a matter of seconds, if that. Malcolm Gladwell calls it rapid cognition.

The idea here is that the mind is capable of taking all kinds of inputs, including what data it is receiving from the body’s senses in the moment, plus previous experience, to decipher a conclusion. This is why your first answer is usually the right answer.

While you might think of yourself as open minded, if you’re human your response is instant judgment. We judge at the speed of blink, very quickly forming opinion based on what we see, hear or feel, using our own personal preferences to decide what we like and don’t like and how we respond to a situation.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s important you are aware of it. We like to bend the world into the frame that best matches our present state. Our snap judgments are reflections of how we choose to see situations at a given point in time. We want to make sure we are “right” in what we are doing and thinking based on our current opinion. If you aren’t aware of these tendencies, you can find yourself trapped into patterns that may make you blind to seeing things in a different, more beneficial light.

This is why fence sitting can be an advantage. Although you have to be careful not to sit on the fence permanently, as not making a decision can be detrimental, having a flexible world view gives you the power to adjust and respond to things as needed. It gives you control and thus freedom over your reality, as counter intuitive as that might sound (a dichotomy).

Your Patterns of Behavior Are Anchors

We are all creatures of habit. One of the greatest challenges to learning something new and growing is your capability to step out of your comfort zone.

Most of us are held back by the patterns we have developed and the comfort zone we live in. It’s natural for us to do this since we look for ways to make our lives more comfortable.

Most of modern society’s advances focus on improving the “quality” of our lives, which means faster, more convenient, less work and above all else – “better” than what has come before.

Unfortunately as is often the case, quicker and easier doesn’t mean better, and most things in life that give us real meaning and substance are not instant achievements.

We derive more satisfaction from what requires more of us. Usually it is our patterns of behavior that make us look for the easy way out. We are comfortable doing things the same way and uncomfortable doing things we have never done before. This unfortunately can blindside us from what is really worth doing.

Knowing and Then Doing What You Don’t Know

One of the most interesting concepts when it comes to learning something new is the idea of discovering what you don’t know that you don’t know.

It’s the “ah-ha” moment, when you come to an awareness you didn’t even realize a problem was there holding you back, or you have a behavior pattern consistently resulting in the same outcome, even though you want something different.

Uncovering what results you are reinforcing based on your current actions and what you need to know and then do to change this, is the first step towards creating what you want in life. Unless you are prepared to completely re-wire some of your belief structures and destroy your old patterns, once you find them, you won’t experience what you desire.

In other words, you first need the ingredients to enter your awareness as a possibility before you have even a hope of achieving what you want. Without tools and a map, you’re going to keep walking the same circles you have always walked, because you’ve programmed yourself to do so.

Are You Lying To Yourself?

If you’re new to self assessment, the process of discovering your patterns can be quite difficult. It literally takes an entirely new way of thinking. It’s like stepping out of your body and mind to watch what it does, then slap it into awareness whenever you notice something needs to change.

Why this is hard is because you are trying to change things you currently believe are true, based on your actions. Even if you consider yourself flexible and open minded, if your immediate response thought and your actions don’t reflect this (your snap judgments and actions repeat), then you’re not really changing.

It’s nice to think of yourself in a certain way, that you are capable of change, but if your real-world actions don’t reflect this, you are pandering to your own sense of self, your ego and belief structures about what kind of person you are.

You are basically believing what you think you are, even if you really aren’t there yet. This is natural of course, as we all operate within our own boundaries and thus justify why we do as the right choice for us right now.

If you want to change, you need to be harsh sometimes about what really is the truth regarding the choices you make. It’s seeing a new reality about yourself that you don’t like, which triggers the push to finally act to create change, rather than just be comfortable thinking you can make the change whenever you want to (and never do, or do so only when it is too late).

Examples Of Common Belief Patterns

Since you are reading this blog and have read this article up to this point, you are likely a practitioner of what I call “meta-thinking“.

Meta-Thinking is a phrase I coined (a language identifier), that describes the process of assessing what’s going on behind the scenes. I described this idea as it relates to analyzing the world around you, in particular business, in this article -

Are You a Master of Meta-Thinking?

The meta aspect of your own decision making process is vitally important to become aware of too. Watching how you see the world, especially your immediate judgments, can be a very eye-opening experience (or perhaps mind-opening is a better phrase).

To help you practice your study of self, here are some common situations we face as humans and some as Internet marketers. Starting today, if you don’t already, monitor how you react to these types of situations -

• When you first meet someone, how do you react to how they dress, the color of their skin, what accent they speak with, what country they come from and how attractive you find them (or not attractive)
• In your everyday life, do you tend to shop in the same places, hang out with the same people, eat the same food, wear the same clothes and stick to the same jobs
• In terms of online marketing, how do you first react to a sales page, or to a certain language style (corporate or sales or natural/blogging style), when you read a testimonial, or see pictures of proof elements like checks or cars
• What are your natural responses to making changes to your own blog or business, like how do you feel about asking for money, or using sales copy, or having to make a sale, or use marketing techniques like launches processes

A lot of people won’t buy products that are sold via long form sales page and consequently couldn’t imagine ever using them to sell their own products or services. Some people think that all testimonials are lies, and thus won’t use them (or now the FTC might stop you!).

You may have a blockage around creating your own product because you don’t see anything you can create as valuable enough for others to buy. Or you may believe that you have to basically lie and cheat and use all those horrible launch tricks in order to convince people to buy what you have, and you just don’t want to become another annoying marketer.

Right now you have a way of looking at everything around you. Your perception dictates what you do and don’t do. Unless you are willing to change how you see things, who you surround yourself with, how you do things and ultimately, how you think, you are going to repeat the same patterns and earn the same results.

The examples above don’t include a “correct” way to look at each situations, they are merely common scenarios we face. If you start to watch how you react you’ve taken the first step because you have opened a new window of awareness – you know what is true to you right now – which means it becomes a variable you can play with rather than just default to.

How To Break Patterns

Once you become aware of how you think, perceive and thus do, you have a starting point for breaking patterns and belief structures that are not beneficial to what you want to create in your life.

Next you need to assess what you want to change, discover the patterns that are holding you back or reinforcing what you don’t want, then find the behaviors that lead to what you do want, and start putting them into practice instead.

In order to help you do this, I’ve found the following set of principles extremely beneficial -

• The 80/20 Rule: Ascertain the few things that matter most and eliminate what doesn’t have impact.

  In most cases, getting the change you want actually requires a lot less “work” than what you do now, because you spend so much time repeating patterns that don’t give you your desires. Once you cut the waste and focus on the leverage points, life becomes a lot easier.

  For more on this, see: What Is The 80/20 Rule And Why It Will Change Your Life

• Theory of Constraints: You are only as strong as your weakest point.

  Identifying your immediate next step towards what you want is critical, and your immediate next step is always elimination of the constraint that is holding you back now. Getting what you want is a process; removing each constraint, which reveals another constraint to remove, and so on. Breaking things down into steps until you can assemble the entire picture is a sound practice, and makes things much less overwhelming.

• Operate with a malleable structure for decision making.

  Live within a fluid environment, but set within boundaries based on the goals you determine using the 80/20 rule and Theory of Constraints. In other words, focus on your goals and be open minded in how to meet them so you are not locked into set ways of doing things, yet you have parameters to work within and you know what your next step is.

• Monitor your decision making process and assess your own meta-game for flaws.

  If you can’t determine this yourself, ask for external input from mentors, coaches, peers or resources such as books, courses, blogs, websites and formal study.

• When speed is required, trust the power of “blink” decision making. Go with your gut instinct and focus more on taking action and less on deliberation.
• Don’t let yourself get too paralyzed. Permanent fence sitting is not good, so it’s important you balance your open awareness with a passion for just getting things done.

  Applying deadlines can really help this process, especially when the avenues for “study” are limitless, which in most circumstances, they are. There is always more you can learn and become aware of, but only so much time to experience it, at least within this lifetime.

Master of Your Universe

It’s a sobering idea that we are entirely responsible for everything we have and don’t have. If you truly grasp this idea it can be very empowering, but can easily depress you too, depending how you look at it.

As with everything in life, how you feel is dictated entirely by how you choose to see things. Opening your eyes to your own behaviors and seeing what doesn’t help you create the truth you want to experience, is an incredibly powerful insight. Knowing this idea alone is enough to start you down a path that could lead you to exactly what you think you want.

Yaro Starak
Pattern Interrupter

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If you’re looking to create the perception in your market that you are an expert at what you do, one of the key techniques you can apply is to create what I call a Language Identifier.

I’ll explain exactly what this is and how to create one in a moment, but first I want to clarify some key traits of your modern day expert, or maven, a term brought back into popularity thanks to the proliferation of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point book.

There Is No True Expert

I have to begin by clarifying that there really is no such thing as a true expert.

Every person on this planet is in a constant state of change and will spend their entire life learning new things. It’s impossible to ever repeat the exact same experience, hence everything is new in the moment that you experience it. In a sense we are all students, not experts, and always will be.

Certainly some people know more than others, but even a person who knows more than anyone else on the planet about a certain subject, only knows a teeny-tiny percentage of the total knowledge they could accumulate.

You could say it’s impossible to ever become a true expert unless you can accumulate infinite knowledge. Infinite knowledge is not something generally experienced in the physically realm, so as we tend to do in our world of relativity, we use a method of comparison and say someone is an expert, in relation to someone else.

Expertise Is A Perception

The key to establishing expertise is to create the perception in a large enough group of people that you know what they don’t, and in particular your knowledge resulted in you experiencing or having something that they recognize as relevant or important to them.

The point here is that truth really doesn’t matter. Of course you don’t want to falsely project you know something you don’t, and then find yourself in a situation where you have to demonstrate your knowledge. This could lead to you being labeled a fraud, and it’s a lot harder to rid yourself of a bad reputation than it is to establish a good one.

The “truth” that matters is how other people perceive you. Every person who comes into contact with you will look at you through their own set of glasses. You have the power to influence those glasses using the power of persuasion.

What Is A Language Identifier?

The Language Identifier technique is a way to influence people in a certain group by creating common language.

Common language are phrases and terms shared by a collective or community, but are usually not known to people outside the group.

For example, in our world of Internet marketing and business, common language terms include -

• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Squeeze Pages
• Return on Investment (ROI)
• Conversion Rate
• Open Rate
• Move the Freeline

The Language Identifier technique is about creating a common language term for your industry, with one very important key aspect – it becomes associated with you.

Common Language spreads very far. Often the entire population of an industry will know the most important common language phrases. If you can associate your name as the creator of one of the terms, you gain instant credibility, fame and notoriety.

Creating just one phrase or term that takes off and spreads within an entire group of people can be enough to cement your place as one of the pioneers and leaders in your industry. This means people will talk about you, your work will be cited as authoritative, and every person new to the industry will become exposed to your name as they learn the key terms.

This is an extremely powerful tool for persuasion.

Two Language Identifier Examples

The list above of common language is mostly made up of terms that you can’t specifically associate with anyone.

Google is associated with PPC, because their AdWords system is the leading PPC platform. They no doubt benefit from association with that term. This is not the best example though as we’re talking about a company and a software platform, rather than just one expert and one phrase.

Move The Freeline is a phrase that may not be known by everyone in the Internet marketing and business industry, but it is known by many people, especially those who actively study our craft. If you review the content from the leaders of Internet marketing, or pop into an Internet marketing forum like the Warrior Forum, you will see this phrase repeated.

If I asked you who came up with the term “Move The Freeline” would you know the answer?

It’s Eben Pagan, one of the leading Internet marketing and business trainers teaching today.

As far as I know, he coined the term and it has spread widely as a great overall philosophy about how to dominate a marketplace. I could be wrong and he may not have been the first to use the phrase, and he definitely wasn’t the first to think of the idea of giving away free stuff to capture attention, but it’s his name that I have associated with that phrase. He get’s the credibility in my book.

If you have never heard of the phrase “Move The Freeline” I explained the principle in some detail in this article – Moving The Free Line.

As further evidence that the Language Identifier technique is powerful, see this article you are reading right now as an example. I’ve just introduced a whole group of people to Eben Pagan and enhanced his reputation by writing about him as the creator of a key term in our industry.

The other example I have for you is the best case of a Language Identifier that I personally created. What’s great about this example is that I was completely oblivious to what I was doing when I did it. After the fact I recognized what I had done, but at the time I was just trying to teach something using as simple language.

So do you know what term I’m best known for in the blogging industry?

Yep, the Pillar Article.

Pillar Article or Pillar Content are phrases I created to sum up what I consider the ingredients of good content. You can read about the history of this phrase and exactly what it means here -

How To Write Great Blog Content – The Pillar Article

The Pillar Article term circulated quite extensively in the blogging world, at least within the meta-blogging (blogging about blogging) and blogging for money industries. Each time another blogger introduced the phrase, they almost always tagged my name as the creator. I also introduce the term in my very popular free report, The Blog Profits Blueprint. This established my expertise as a blog trainer and continues to do so today.

How To Create A Language Identifier For Your Market

A Language Identifier is made up of two key ingredients -

1. An idea that is powerful and relevant to a group of people, enough so that they share it with others after benefiting from it themselves
2. A short and catchy name you come up with to describe it

There really isn’t much to it. The great thing about this is you can create Language Identifiers anytime you have a good idea, even if it’s not your own idea.

Do you think I was the first to see that coming up with common phrases and associating your name with them as the creator is a good marketing technique?

Of course not.

No doubt thousands of marketers have taught this technique. I know from my own experience I remember quite clearly Rich Schefren talked about this idea in his materials.

The great thing about the technique is you can use your own understanding to describe your Language Identifier. There’s no such thing as an original idea, but your interpretation is always original and unique to you.

Most bloggers who teach have the potential to create Language Identifiers all the time because they are so good at sharing ideas using their own words. However most don’t, they just use generic words or phrases, or instead enhance the reputation of other experts by repeating their key terms.

I know this is true because I do it all the time with my blog. I’ve written many articles and taught many ideas that I could have coined unique phrases around but didn’t.

One of the best examples I can think of from recent memory is Frank Kern’s term – money magnet.

Frank created this phrase to describe what is essentially something you give away for free as part of a process you go through to launch a product, which he teaches inside his Mass Control course. I teach this same technique but call it the generic phrase, “lead resource”. Jeff Walker also teaches this technique in his Product Launch Formula. The concept also fits nicely into the overall strategy of Moving The Freeline.

Because Frank has significant distribution for what he teaches, he’s charismatic when he teaches it and he’s smart enough to come up with catchy phrases to encapsulate his ideas, he enjoys preeminence as a result. If you’ve ever studied his Mass Control course you will see the program is littered with his own “Language Identifiers”, phrases he came up with to label his techniques.

That really is all there is to this technique. Describe an idea or concept and use a catchy label for it, then do what you can to distribute it and hope it catches on.

When you get distribution of an idea, and your name becomes synonymous with it, it leads to true maven status in your market. Do it often enough and you can become one of the very top leaders of your market.

Leading By Example

By now you’ve probably guessed that my use of the phrase Language Identifier is in fact an attempt to implement the technique. In other words, Language Identifier is a Language Identifier, or at least it could be if enough people implement the technique.

I’ve had the idea for this article for a long time and only last weekend decided to come up with a catch phrase to describe it. I figured it would be wrong to not demonstrate the technique using the technique itself.

After about an hour of brainstorming I didn’t have a good phrase to describe the term, but when I went to write the title of this blog post the phrase Language Identifier just popped out. I liked it and decided to run with it.

Whether or not I get credit for this technique and people identify my personal brand as an Internet marketing expert with it, isn’t too important to me, however the concept is sound. Creating your own common language is a great idea for virtually any niche.

As humans we like to belong to communities and the common language that makes up part of that community helps keep it together. You may start as a participant in the community and a user of its common language, but if you want to stand out and become a leader you need to get creative and stamp your authority by adding your own new ideas as well.

The Language Identifier technique is a very simple way to do this, which is why it has the potential to be so effective – simple has a way of spreading.

Yaro Starak
Common Language Creator

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The question isn’t about timing in terms of day or night, or what day of the week, or time of the year you should launch, rather what conditions need to be in place to expect a successful opening campaign. Here’s what we’re talking about…

• How many subscribers do you need on your email list?
• How many RSS subscribers on your blog should you have?
• How many unique visitors to your websites do you need?
• How many affiliates do you need?
• How many sales should you expect given certain numbers?

All these questions and many more make up part of the answer to the overall question of when you can consider yourself ready to launch.

It is difficult for me to answer this question with anything concrete because every market is different. However I understand the need for ballpark figures and some sort of reassurance from someone who has launched before, especially if they are your coach and mentor.

What Are The Benchmarks?

Inside Membership Site Mastermind I alluded to the number of around 5,000 subscribers as a good target to aim for before launching, which ideally should be email subscribers if possible.

You can include RSS subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends and fans too, but generally these contact points are less responsive and less targeted than email. Email subscribers, especially when they come through from a targeted incentive like a free report or email course, are more qualified, hence more likely to buy.

Another metric you can look at that is relevant is the open and click through rates of the emails you send. While it’s nice to have 10,000 email subscribers, in most cases you are lucky if 25% of them even open the emails you send. If you’re getting 10% or more of them clicking your links, you’re doing very well.

Given that opening an email is easier than clicking a link, which is easier than making a sale, you can see why it’s important you understand the reality behind the numbers you currently get.

If you don’t track the open and click through rates on your emails, you should start. Outside of this data you can look at unique visitors to your blog or website as another estimate of how much traffic you can expose to your offer, but understand knowing how many people read your blog content is difficult to correlate to how many people will buy from you.

What Metrics Should You Analyze?

Let’s start with some common caveats, although these won’t be obvious to you if you’re new to online marketing, so it’s worth reiterating them -

1. Your conversion rate (number of people who take action divided by the total number of people you make the offer to) matters most. Conversion is something you can test and improve forever.
2. Some markets are “worth” much more than others. A customer who is buying a house is worth a lot more than a person buying a new shirt because of the profit margin per sale. It’s possible to have very low conversion yet still make millions because the value of each customer is so high.
3. Conversion rates across industries vary considerably. In my niche, getting a 5% conversion rate for buyers is very good, while in other markets it might be terribly low. What’s “good enough” is dependent on how much you want to make.
4. Conversion is also a function of overall traffic. You can do really well with a low conversion rate if you have access to millions of people. If you have access to very few people, then you either need a fat profit margin and/or a high conversion rate.

In an ideal world, your business would sell high margin products, you have a very high conversion rate and you have access to millions of people. That’s the holy grail of business, but it’s not possible in every market.

Some businesses rely on significant turnover of low priced items (like dollar discount stores), where others rely on high priced items with a low conversion and high margin, like luxury jewelery and watches.

Now you might understand why it’s so difficult for me to answer the question as to when is the right time to launch. Every market is different, every product is different, and every marketer is in a different situation in terms of their relationship and exposure to their market. There are just too many variables to consider.

So Here’s My Answer

Given the caveats I’m now comfortable to explain what you can expect and how best to make the decision of when to launch your product online.

My very first launch was conducted when I had approximately 3,000 email subscribers and the same in RSS subscribers. This was just my own lists.

I also knew I had some affiliates with access to lots of people, although most of them were bloggers so would not be using email marketing (most of the top bloggers in my niche weren’t making extensive use of email marketing back then).

To be honest I had no idea what to expect during my first launch, so here’s what happened.

I did my launch campaign, releasing the Blog Profits Blueprint for the first time. Lots of affiliates promoted the blueprint and my email list grew from about 3,000 to 10,000 people once the launch was done. Most affiliates sent me ten to fifty new leads, where my top five affiliates contributed close to 1,000 each (affiliate results always skew to an aggressive 80/20 rule).

The good thing about doing a launch is you build very targeted email lists. Before my launch I had my general blog tips newsletter with the 3,000 people. I then added an “early notice” list (the most targeted list of people who really wanted to join my membership site) and the Blueprint list for people who opted in for my free report (another targeted list since they were interested in profiting from blogs, which is what my product is about).

Not only did I expand my list, I attracted very targeted subscribers.

When my program went live I ended up with just over 400 paying members. If you do the math based on 10,000 email subscribers that is just over 0.04 conversion rate (about 4.15% was the number).

Since then I’ve conducted another five opening launch campaigns for different products and monitored the results of some of my top performing student’s launches, so I have a feel for what to expect given the variables, however as I said earlier, it’s very GENERAL.

So, to answer the very first question posed about when you can begin your launch in terms of the metrics, here’s what I tell people -

• Aim for 5,000 targeted email subscribers as a good ballpark figure before doing a launch
• Do the math based on a 1% conversion rate and see if you would be happy with that. That means for every 1,000 people on your list, you will have ten paying customers.
• Make sure you do the conversion rate based on the number of opt-ins to a prospect list, not your daily blog readership. Blog readers haven’t opted in to something so they are not prospects, they are suspects.

  A suspect is someone who is engaging with your content, while a prospect has taken an action to commit further to you, like joining your email list or subscribing to your RSS feed. Conversion rates should be calculated based on comparing prospects to customers, not suspects to customers.

One percent is a low conversion rate, but it’s grounding. It makes you think realistically and if all goes accordingly to plan, you will do better and exceed your expectations.

Remember when doing calculations you should factor in affiliates if you have them. It’s tough to know how many leads (subscribers) an affiliate will send you, because they have their own conversion rate based on how responsive their audience is.

The very top affiliates in my market send between 1,000 and 2,000 leads. This is standard across the Internet marketing industry because I can usually send other marketers about this many leads when I do affiliate promotions. With that many leads I’m usually in the top 5 of lead producers in an affiliate competition (that’s not sales, that’s prospects/leads).

Some will send more and some will send less, but understand that just because an affiliate has 100,000 people on their list does not mean you will have even 10% of that audience join your list after the affiliate promotes for you. Again, err on the side of lower than expected when doing your estimations.

Bear in mind I’m quoting from my experience in the Internet marketing niche. This is not indicative of what to expect from any other niche. If you can get numbers for your particular industry that’s definitely helpful, but understand you can never be certain of what to expect.

What Else Do You Need Before Launch?

My free report, the Membership Site Masterplan goes into more depth about what you need to have in place in terms of content and traffic in your market before launching, so I encourage you read or listen to that if you want more details.

My coaching program Membership Site Mastermind covers all of this in greater detail, however it won’t be open again until 2010, so keep an eye on www.membershipsitemastermind.com/signup for the next student intake.

To put it simply, you will need the following before you launch -

1. A product or the first part of your product for a membership site or coaching program to deliver to your customers after the order
2. A method to take payment for your product
3. If you are going to have affiliates, a system to track the sales and credit affiliates with commissions
4. A means to reach people, in other words some form of distribution, usually an email list of your own, a blog or website, affiliates and any other traffic tools like twitter, facebook, social media, etc.
5. Marketing materials to convert the sale, like a sales page or video, prelaunch content like a lead free resource and content like emails and blog posts that specifically promote your launch

For most new marketers, if I was to say where they go wrong, it’s spending too much time thinking about their CONTENT and not enough time thinking and about their MARKETING. Creating content requires only your time and energy. Generating traffic requires you get the attention and commitment of other people, like affiliates and potential customers. This is challenging.

This article should have helped you get a rough feel for what position you need to be in before you go into launch mode, in terms of the reach you need in your market. What I don’t want to see is people working hard to reach 1,000 email subscribers, expecting at least 10% of them to pay money and thus do a launch and end up with a much lower than expected result.

There are no guarantees, so don’t expect anything. Put in your best effort and focus on the positives and you will do well, and remember that each experience is growth, no matter what the result.

Even if you don’t make as many sales as you expect, there’s a very good chance your profile will increase, as will your subscriber base, each time you do a launch. Launches are the best business growth tool I know of today online, so if you want to rapidly increase all the positive aspects of your business, plan to make an impact every time you release a product.

A Launch Is The Best Test

One last point before I wrap up.

Almost everything I’ve covered in this article sits in the realm of the unknown. You can only make smart estimates about your results. Every launch is different, every situation is new and you can never know what to expect.

My most recent launch as I write this was by far the most relaxed and confident launch I have ever done. I feel like a veteran now with launches, having done so many in the last three years. I had a ballpark figure of what to expect given the type of campaign I was going to run and the product I was selling, and by the end of the launch I was almost spot on with my estimates.

My estimation was accurate, which is good, but the real difference this time was how I didn’t go through a roller coaster ride during the launch in terms of my emotional state. If you’ve never done a launch before let me warn you – it’s an emotional ride – and part of the reason for this is all the unknowns (if you don’t believe me, take a look at this video of me from my first launch – Yaro’s Bad Hair Product Launch Day).

You just don’t know how many people will buy your product. You don’t know how your marketing materials will gain traction. You don’t know which affiliates will promote, how often they will promote or how many sales or leads they will generate. As a result of so many unknowns, you tend to rapidly shoot through highs and lows, spiking up when something good happens, and crashing down when your expectations aren’t meant. At the end of it all, hopefully, you will feel exhausted, but content, and definitely wiser for the experience.

And that my friend is the real power of the launch.

A launch is one of the best marketing tests you will ever do. All the unknowns you had before you launched become answered. You know what marketing materials work best. You know what your conversion rate is. You know how many of your prospects are buyers. You know which affiliates are your leaders and what affiliates can do for your marketing.

You may or may not meet your expectations, but you will have a result. That in many ways is more important. One launch is not the be all and end all of things you will do for your business. It’s really just the beginning. You will do many launches, release different products and hopefully go on to much greater things.

Your success depends on growth, and growth depends on experience. Conducting a launch is the best marketing and business experience you can go through online, in terms of speed of results.

Too many people sit on the fence in fear waiting for the ideal situation to emerge to get out there and do something. This is the worst possible outcome because you are inert. Doing nothing guarantees a result – nothing.

If you are asking yourself all the questions I presented at the start of this article and more, the single best piece of advice I can give you is to get out there and just do it. Nothing anyone can tell you will ever make you feel completely confident about what you are going to do.

Learn to live with that feeling of unknown and understand that the people who reach a level of mastery are there not because they know everything, but because they have accepted that they will never know everything – it’s impossible – and acting within the mystery is the key to success.

Good luck and have fun!

Yaro Starak
Riding The Mystery

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