How To Maximize Profit From Every Product You Create
In 2007 I launched a program called Blog Mastermind, which as far as I could tell at the time, was the first blog training program created by someone who had a profitable blog.
Of course there were many other bloggers out there at the time who made money blogging – many who made more than I did – but most weren’t in the business of teaching how to do Internet marketing. They focused on creating content to feed their hungry audience in whatever niche they targeted, monetizing with methods like advertising and selling affiliate products.
Even those bloggers who where focused on teaching others how to make money online, hadn’t adopted the idea of creating a products or even building email lists. Everything was about earning more from AdSense, or how to increase your pageviews so you could charge more for advertising.
In my case I had spent the previous two years studying the work of Internet marketers, who didn’t blog, but instead used landing pages to build email lists and then drive that traffic to sales pages to sell products. Up to that point I was like every other blogger, making a solid almost-full time income thanks to sponsors and promoting affiliate products like ebooks, DVD courses and live workshops.
I won’t go into detail about what happened after I released my own product as that story is well accounted for in my free report – The Membership Site Masterplan – and in the video on my Membership Site Mastermind sales page, so check out those two resources if you want the details.
In short, creating Blog Mastermind and doing a full launch campaign for it, changed my life because it pushed my income above six figures for the first time.
The Lifecycle Of An Information Product
Do You Want A Copy Of My Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers?
It was early 2006. I had been blogging for over a year and felt I had achieved something.
My blog had recently surpassed 1,000 RSS subscribers (what is RSS), making it at the time the most popular website I had ever built. The income was solid – up to $2,000 a month at best – and it was growing. I loved what I was doing.
My plan, based on all the Internet marketing advice I studied from the experts to “create a product”, was to start by releasing an ebook to test the waters as my first product. I had already begun to grow my email list, focusing on the idea of teaching other bloggers how to build traffic, since I felt that was something I was becoming good at.
One of the keys to my success with traffic was how well I was doing in organic search results. I was literally famous in the Internet marketing space because all the top Internet marketers would find my blog when searching for their name or their products or terms related to our industry.
This is incredibly powerful leverage, if you want to meet important people in your industry, or as an affiliate marketing technique, because you can just write about something often enough if you want a top ranking for a certain term or name.
My blog’s solid search engine performance has continued as a trend today, with about half the traffic I attract to this blog still coming from Google search queries. Considering how much more competitive the environment is now, with so many blogs on the same topic as this one, I consider my consistency an achievement.
I don’t really talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) much on this blog anymore, mainly because I don’t believe much has really changed over the past few years. The fundamentals are still the fundamentals. You will find plenty of articles on SEO in my archives under the SEO category if you’re keen for study materials.
However, SEO was a huge part of my early studies of Internet marketing, primarily focused on attracting more traffic to the business I used to own, BetterEdit.com, a proofreading service. When I was running that business, 50% of new client acquisition came from Google search, which was important – it made the business much more hands off for me to run when you have a steady stream of customers coming in without advertising expense.
As a result of the focus I had back then and the results with my blog, I considered myself half-decent at SEO. By no means was I an expert, and I certainly didn’t pretend to be one, but I felt I knew enough that I had something to share.
As a result of this, my intended first product, was to be an ebook called “The Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers“, which as you can guess, was designed as a guide to help bloggers improve their search engine rankings and attract traffic from Google and the other search engines. The ebook was almost complete and I even went so far as to have a cover created for it, which you can see inset (including the big haired, old suit photo version of me).
The book was never sold publicly because I decided to release a course on traffic. I can’t really remember why I decided to switch gears so late in the development of this product. It could have been because I thought selling a course at a higher price would make more money, but it was more likely due to some kind of fear based decision making or distractions. I just didn’t have the follow-through at the time to do a launch.
I registered the domain name BlogTrafficSchool.com, which I still own, and focused on releasing that program instead.
Of course if you know my story, the product never saw the light of day either, so I ended up having a 75% complete course on Blog Traffic, and a near complete ebook on SEO for blogs. Thankfully the third time I finally got something out the door, and released Blog Mastermind as my first product. The rest is history.
Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers – Revamped And Ready For Release
I recently began reviewing my ebook on SEO for blogs and was quite impressed to see that it’s still full of fantastic advice. It only requires about 10% revision work and I believe it could become one of the most helpful, and true to my style – simple guides – to follow on how to get more traffic from Google to your blog.
The book is over 100 pages and includes insights into how search engines work, how to optimize the internal structure of your blog, some very solid advice on linking strategies – including 75 link building techniques, with some case studies of my own experience using them – a quick launch checklist, and more.
It’s all content of course, direct from my experience and research, into your hands.
So do you want a copy?
I will release the book for sale later in the year, however I have some good news for you if you want a copy now.
How Stable Is Your Online Income
I’ve made some form of income from the Internet for the past ten years. That’s incredible for me to consider, as I look back over the years how for such a long time I felt very insecure about where my next paycheck was going to come from and whether there would be another one the following month.
For the first five years, roughly from 2000 to 2005, my income from the Internet varied, reflecting the choices I had made and my own variable focus. It went something like this…
- I made spare change money selling stuff from around my house on eBay
- I played a card game called Magic: The Gathering and began selling the cards I won at tournaments in online trading forums and newsgroups
- I built a website focused on the same card game, eventually earning a few hundred dollars a month from banner and newsletter sponsorship
- I started an e-commerce card shop from the website and continued to sell my winnings from tournaments, and began buying product at wholesale prices to sell online at retail (until credit card fraud forced me to shut it down)
- I started a proofreading business, which after a slow start, eventually earned enough income to pay me a full salary, equivalent to a first year university graduate
This is a list of the projects that I made money on during those five years. It doesn’t include the websites I built that shortly after I abandoned, my brief experiments at AdWords arbitrage and other various false-starts because I was so easily distracted by new methods to “make millions” online.
During this time I finished my university degree, held a couple of casual jobs and traveled too. I also watched, often resulting in plenty of self-doubt on my part, as my friends entered graduate jobs, which looked a whole lot more secure than what I was doing at the time and often paid them better as well.
Looking back over those five years the money I made proved surprisingly reliable, even though at the time my confidence in the income stream wasn’t there (good old hindsight). I had enough time to work on new projects because I focused on ideas that didn’t need too much personal time from me once set up, for example getting volunteer writers for my card site and using contract editors for the proofreading site, so I could easily manage them both at the same time.
The end result was a diversified online income stream that continued to grow as long as I did a few key activities (like put up posters to promote the proofreading business), plus I was creating assets that I would later sell.
The Era Of Rapid Income Growth
Will Hamilton Reveals How He Makes Six Figures Online Teaching Tennis
(There’s a tiny bit of lag on this video, but it shouldn’t stop you from hearing the content.)
This was the most highly anticipated podcast interview I have ever done (for me anyway) because it combines two of my all time favorite subjects -
- Making money from the Internet, and
- Tennis!
That’s right, my guest Will Hamilton is a professional college tennis player, who leveraged his knowledge and skill with the game to create a six-figures a year information publishing business, based around a model that uses a blog, videos and a premium membership site area (that model should sound familiar to you).
You can check out his site at FuzzyYellowBalls.com – that’s a tennis ball reference in case you couldn’t guess.
If you’re serious about launching your own money making membership site or selling an information product online, take my coaching program -
How Will Built His Business
Will started by creating instructional videos on how to play tennis, which he circulated via YouTube (his channel is YouTube.com/fuzzyyellowballs).
His angle was to create videos of a better standard than anyone else out there and capitalize on the YouTube traffic, bring those readers back to his website and then get them on to his email list.
A few short years later and it’s worked really well. He has several hundred videos, resulting in a million video views a month and an email list of 60,000 subscribers – one of the largest email lists in the tennis industry, and it all started as a simple two-man operation (Will and his tech partner Adam).
Once Will established traffic, he realized that his original plan of monetization via advertising wasn’t cutting the mustard, so he decided to follow the premium membership strategy, launching a $25/month a membership site, which currently boasts over 600 paying members. Do the math and that’s over $15,000 a month).
Will’s story is definitely worth a listen because it’s yet another great example of someone starting with a skill, and through consistent work, launches an online business that results in getting paid really well to talk about something you love.
It’s also a great example of the little guy rising up to challenge the large media companies. Will receives press status just like mainstream media journalists when he attends tennis events. It’s quite impressive how far a blog can take you (and yes I’m a little jealous – I’d like to hang with tennis pros too).
Watch this video interview or download the audio file and listen to the full story how of how Will created his online business.
When Is The Right Time To Launch Your Product?
During the last coaching call I did with my members the question of when is the right time to launch your product online came up repeatedly from different people.
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.
