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.
New Book: Think, Write & Retire
One of the Internet marketers who I respect the most is Indian Dr. Mani. What is special about the Doc, is that he really is a doctor, and devotes the money he generates online to heart surgeries for children, which he even does himself!
Dir Mani’s written a new book – a real physical book – that you can order now (today if possible to help the book rank well in Amazon).
The book is called…
Think, Write And RETIRE!Your ULTIMATE guide to being an Internet Infopreneur and turning words into MASSIVE wealth – Easily!
As a blogger who makes a living from what I write, I wholeheartedly recommend what this book teaches, and if you order a copy from Amazon today you can grab a bunch of bonus gifts too.
How You Can Become A Dominant Affiliate
The last week if you’ve been reading this blog you know I’ve recommended two courses, both of which I am an affiliate for. In this situation both products I’ve promoted before, so they’ve proven successful, however they are very different in many respects, for example…
- One product offers a $1 trial and then is $67 a month with 50% commission
- The other product has several pricing points, however starting at $897 and hence the affiliate commission is at least in the several hundred dollars range per order (as much as $1250 commission per sale)
- One product is limited based on time (one week)
- The other product is limited based on space (200 people maximum)
- Both products offer affiliate prizes if you make a certain number of sales
Looking at this data you might wonder which product is the best to promote? Which will make more money?
Those questions are difficult to know if you’ve never promoted these kinds of offers before, but since I have I know that I will sell a handful of the high end course and several hundred of the $1 trials. It’s a moot point for me as to which one I will promote as I agreed to support both people months ago because they supported me and we have a relationship I want to maintain. That is always the most important concern for me, not the potential for profit, although that’s a motivating factor too.
In your case you need to build up your understanding of what offers work best to your market, so you need to test. The first time I ever promoted a product that cost over $1,000 I made two sales. I netted about $1400 in commission, which was by far the largest affiliate income return I had ever made with my blog at the time. This was about when my blog was 9 months old.
Before that I had tested smaller affiliate products and made a few hundred dollars worth of sales, so I was liking the large commissions from the higher priced items, however you can just as easily make zero sales too. That’s the thing I’ve found with high priced products. You don’t need to sell many to make good money, but it’s tougher to convert people, for obvious reasons. That’s why I like to promote products across the board, from free trials to several thousand dollars, so you have a good feel for what your audience responds to.
Of course price is not the only concern, the offer is actually more important. I’ve promoted many lower priced products that don’t convert as well as much more expensive items because of how well the offers match what my audience want. Understanding your people is the most important thing, so run some tests and see what the biggest sticking points for your audience are and then give them good products to solve those problems.
