Jason’s Tips

How To Get Good Reviews For Your Kindle Book

Reviews are very important on Kindle. Of course a good or bad rating can have a big impact when it comes to influencing the buying decisions of your readers – most of us are considerably more likely to buy a book if we think it sounds good according to the previous buyers. Likewise, if a book is often described negatively then we will often be put off (by the way, if you want to learn how to write a 5 star Kindle book, check out this post here.

Actually though, this isn’t the biggest way that a review impacts sales. Ultimately, most of us will at least read the free sample of a book on Kindle if we are sufficiently interested in the topic.

The bigger problem then, is that reviews can impact rankings. If your book has bad reviews, then it won’t rank as highly on the Kindle Store and this will mean that far fewer people are able to discover it and thus spend money on it.

So the question becomes: how do you ensure you get the best reviews? Let’s take a look…

Write A Great Book

This should go without saying but it’s incredibly important to write a good book if you want to get the best reviews.

This means that the writing style should be on-point with good use of language, correct spelling and good grammar.

Likewise though, it also means that the book should be interesting, unique and engaging. It needs to provide some kind of value and that means that you need to provide some kind of takeaway for the reader.

And if you are writing a non-fiction book, you need to ensure that your book is well researched and factually correct.

Write An Accurate Description

In a bid to make the most sales possible on their books, a lot of marketers and writers will write a highly persuasive and sales-y description for their books. The aim here is to make people want to read the book and to thereby over-sell it.

While this can help to give you an initial surge in sales though, it can also end up hurting you if what’s in the book doesn’t live up to the hype.

Make sure your description is accurate and that you don’t give away all the surprises inside. You want your readers to come away pleasantly surprised and not disappointed when they’ve finished the book.

And ideally you’ll have them wanting more; this is why creating a series of books can be highly lucrative if done correctly.

Charge Correctly

Ultimately, a review should tell people if a book is good value or not.

And the best way to make a book good value is to decrease the price – thereby meaning that the readers get more for less.

Actually, one of the very best things you can do for your book in terms of ranking is to lower the price for a while to drive sales and to increase the number of positive reviews.

Respond

Another tip is to respond to your negative reviews. Don’t be defensive or aggressive and respect your readers’ right to their opinion. At the same time though, you should be sure that you respond in order to apologise and to explain your point of view – you can even offer a refund.

This not only shows that you offer good customer service (thereby taking some of the sting out of a bad review) but if you’re lucky they may even change their rating once they feel heard!

Another way to increase the positive reviews for your Kindle book is to ensure you have great pictures in your book and there are a number of things to keep in mind concerning your pictures. So let’s look at that next…

How To Take Stunning Pictures For Your Kindle Book

Pictures can add a great deal to a Kindle title and really help it to sell. Not only is the cover one of the most important features when it comes to grabbing attention and drawing people in but the images inside the book will also help to illustrate your points and also make the pages pop more.

This is only even more true now that the Kindle Fire and other full color tablets are becoming more popular as many users’ preferred reading devices.

But the question is: how do you take great quality pictures for your book? It’s not enough just to add images: they need to look fantastic if they’re going to help you sell.

Of course you can use free stock images or you can buy images – but this will pale in comparison to the benefits that come from creating custom images that perfectly illustrate what the text is saying and that your readers aren’t going to accidentally find anywhere else!

So here’s how you do it…

Invest In A Good Camera

A good starting point is to invest in a high quality camera. This should have a decent number of mega pixels and should also have a good lens and lots of features.

A DSLR can help you to pull off more impressive and stylistic effects but it’s not necessary if you want to save money or you’re not sure about learning all the different settings.

A bridge camera is a camera that is much cheaper and that offers a good ‘half-way’ point between a DSLR and a decent superzoom.

Think About Lighting

When you take your photo, it’s not just enough to think about the object itself. At the same time, you also need to think about the lighting which will have a big impact on how it appears.

Avoid having glare (unless it’s intentional) and make sure the subject of the photo is well lit.

Ideally, try to have light hitting the object from the side.

Think About Composition

Also important is to compose your shot. This means thinking about the foreground, middle ground and background.

It also means deciding where you want your subject to be among these elements and how you’re going to lead the eye from one to the other.

Having an object out of focus in the foreground, or putting your subject to the left of center can make for a more interesting shot than just taking photos of everything head on.

Tell A Story

Perhaps most important of all is that your photos tell a story. That is to say that it’s not good enough for your photos to simply be of something: you need to make sure that they express emotion or suggest what has just happened or what is just about to happen.

Instead of taking a photo of a party for instance, you could take a photo of a glass that’s empty with lipstick marks around the top. This creates much more intrigue because it gets the user to think – which in turn increases engagement for your book.

If you want to know more about cracking Kindle, then check out the featured resource below and grab a free report showing you how to make money with Kindle books. Download, read it and take action 🙂

3 Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List

When you decide to start building your email list, it isn’t just a matter of sending your subscribers your promotional newsletters or bombarding them with affiliate links. There are many things to consider to help avoid upsetting your subscribers and to keep them opening your emails.

While there are many ways you can encourage people to subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to keep them on your list once you have them there!!

Apart from that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider or ISP. There are now many laws and rules that are applied to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails.

And this is especially important with the introduction of GDPR if you are collecting subscribers from the EU.

Email has always been a popular medium for marketing because of the low cost, and because of this, many companies have seized the opportunity and have flooded their subscribers email inboxes with promotional mail that offers very little in value to the reader.

This is a very big problem in the Internet Marketing and Make Money Online niches in particular.

The thing is, if people opt-in to your list it’s because something about you resonated with them and they want to receive your newsletters and promotional materials, just not to be bombarded with offer after offer.

They have consented to being on your list by signing up and giving you their valuable email address; just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe option in every email to make it easy for them to leave if they want to do so.

There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe, such as if the email account was hacked; it may be rare, but it does happen.

One thing to remember is that it is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. You can do this by using the many tools and technologies available within your autoresponder. For a great autoresponder, check out Active Campaign or Aweber.

Do not worry; your investment in any email marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales and profit. Plus, if you treat your subscribers well, they can become customers for life.

Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean.

Your reputation as a legitimate businessman and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist. To help guide you through all of this, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1: Take Notice Of Your Bounce Rate

These are e-mails that are basically undeliverable and for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.

There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at the time they were sent but these can still be delivered later, and you should be able to resend any email via your autoresponder service.

There may also be bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at the time.

Then there are those messages that will never be delivered. This could be because the subscriber has used an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or a dummy email address that was probably used just to try to get a freebie that you may have been giving away.

Manage your list by making a note on those email addresses that bounce. Remove these email addresses from your list regularly so that you have accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail.

You may also want to check the spellings of your email addresses in your list. One common mistake is when an N instead of an M is placed in the .com area.

Your bounce rate may affect your deliverability too, so it is doubly important to remove email addresses that are bouncing to ensure that your other emails aren’t being affected.

2: Make It Easy To Unsubscribe

Always provide an unsubscribe link in all of your mails. This is a legal requirement, especially nowadays with increased data protection laws. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously.

If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers.

You could also lose a lot of subscribers this way and if you earn a reputation as a spammer, this will definitely affect future potential subscribers as your name will get around the internet via social media etc. so always act with integrity and have your readers best interest at heart.

3: Keep It Clean

Do not provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. You probably have no idea of the real age of the recipient and you could get many complaints from this.

Of course, if you are in this type of niche, you would need to have safeguarding measures in place to ensure that anyone who does subscribe to this type of material is of a suitable age.

This is why personally I would avoid these types of niches because they are very difficult to police from your end and if you are found to be sending age-inappropriate content, you could end up in a lot of trouble.

Controversial issues should also be avoided by your business unless it is relevant to the nature of your business. Perhaps something controversial has happened in the news that you can use in an email, but this should definitely be the exception and not the norm.

If you keep these tips in mind, you should be able to maintain a healthy relationship with your subscribers. Always remember that you are there to serve your readers; they have come to you for your advice and guidance so don’t exploit them. It’s fine to promote offers to them, but it shouldn’t be the entire focus of your email marketing strategy.

Just think; “Would I be happy to receive this email in my inbox?”

If the answer is yes, then you are on the right track…

If you want to know more about nurturing your list after they have opted in, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊

How To Outsource Any Project In 4 Easy Steps

You’ve heard that outsourcing is a great way to grow your business (that’s true).

Because, let’s face it; you can’t do everything yourself.

While it may seem like common sense, it’s not always so easy for new entrepreneurs to acknowledge. They tell themselves that they’ll save money if they just do it all themselves.

Perhaps it’s the control freak in us who wants to stay in charge of every aspect of our business, or the frugal shopper who wants to save money by just working on projects ourselves.

Regardless of how hard we may try to convince ourselves not to outsource, the bottom line is that delegating important tasks to qualified professionals is simply the fastest way to grow your business and skyrocket your income.

There’s another reason why outsourcing is important: when you try to do it all, you’re taking 2 big risks.

The first is that some tasks and projects won’t be done as well as they well as they could be if you had more time, or the necessary training. This could lead to distributing inferior products or low-quality content that won’t help move the needle.

The second risk, and it’s a big one, is that you’ll simply burn out and not be able to stay on top of your market.

No matter how many skills are in your arsenal, or how many years of experience you have, there are always tasks that can (and should) be done by seasoned professionals. As the old saying goes, just because you can do it yourself doesn’t mean you should.

With an outsourced team, you can get the help you need to grow your business faster than ever before, and without worrying about human resources and employment taxes.

Better yet, if you stick with hiring professionals who are experts in their field, you won’t even have to train anyone to complete the tasks you assign to them because they’ll already be experienced and ready to take on all that you have to offer.

Outsourcing is the smart way of doing business, building an established presence in your industry quickly and developing a life-long brand that stands out and apart in your niche.

Connecting to seasoned professionals gives you the leg up, allowing you to compete, head on, with some of the biggest names in your niche.

In other words, it levels out the playing field.

And while you’d like to get started right away, maybe it all seems a little overwhelming.

You’re not sure where to start or what steps to take to get the process rolling.

Good news: You can get started with outsourcing in just four easy steps. Read on…

Step 1: Determine Your Needs

Your first step is to figure out what to outsource. Ask yourself these questions:

What jobs do you need done? Here you need to evaluate all areas of your business, including: Writing, copywriting, graphics, design, programming and other technical jobs, marketing and customer service. Then draw up a list of jobs you have in each of these areas.

Is it cost-effective to outsource? First attach a dollar figure to your time (such as $50, $75, $100 or whatever your time is worth).

Then figure out how long it would take you to do a particular task. Next, multiply the hours it takes you to a complete a task by your per-hour worth.

Example: Let’s say your time is worth $75 an hour and it would take you two hours to create a graphic – that’s $150 of your time. If you can find someone to do it for less, then it is indeed cost effective to outsource the task.

Step 2: Advertise Your Job

Once you’ve figured out what tasks you need to outsource, your next step is to advertise the job in order to attract as many qualified prospective freelancers as possible.

While there are a variety of ways to do this – and you should utilize as many of these methods as possible.

One great way to do it is to post your project on a freelancing board like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer or Craigslist. You’re bound to attract plenty of qualified candidates!

Step 3: Choose A Vendor

At this point you’ll get to choose from among a lot of vendors. But don’t make your choice based on price alone.

Instead, you need to do your due diligence to find the most reliable freelancer who’ll get the best results for you. That means checking the freelancer’s feedback rating, testimonials, business history and portfolio.

This step takes a bit of time upfront, but it will save you a lot of time, frustration and money in the long run.

Once you’ve researched all the candidates, select the best one and hire him or her. Then move on to the next step…

Step 4: Manage The Project

Whether you get mediocre or great results is largely going to depend on what you do at this step. That’s because you need to do the following.

Provide a clear brief and instructions. Your freelancer may have some amazing talents, but mind reading probably isn’t one of them. And that’s why you need to provide a clear and accurate “no guesswork required” brief for your freelancer.

Offer protocol checklists to help your freelancer produce the best results. Secondly, you need to continue to communicate your wishes and help your freelancer do great work for you. And one way to do this is by offering a protocol checklist for each project.

At this point you’re probably thinking at the whole four-step process sounds simple enough. And you’d be right. But you may also be looking to fill in the gaps.

Example: Where can you get sample briefs and protocol checklists? How, exactly, do you do your due diligence? And what are some of the other reliable ways to find freelancers?

Well, there is a lot more to be learnt about outsourcing; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report that covers this topic in more detail. Download it, read it and take action 🙂

2 Quick Tips To Help You Stay Focused

I’m sure you’ll all agree that staying focused has a major impact on your productivity and thus ultimately your success.

Why? Well, focus allows you to stay on track and avoid the many distractions that life will put in your way.

If you can manage these distractions then you will be able to reach your goals that much quicker, and reaching goals quicker will help to motivate you as you are seeing results; it’s a positively reaffirming success cycle.

Of course, focus isn’t just about work or business. Focus impacts many other areas of our lives such as study and our relationships and if you lack focus it can cause many problems in these areas so it is well worth learning how to stay focused!

Medication and lack of sleep can cause people to lose focus so it is definitely worth taking these things into consideration if these are relevant to your particular circumstances.

So how do you stay focused?

Well, there are many ways and in this post, we are going to look at a couple of ways that you can keep your focus on the right things.

OK, on with the show…

Tip 1: Don’t Give In To Temptation

By this I mean that you need to avoid the temptation to do things you would rather be doing!

Let’s be honest, most people don’t actually enjoy doing work. It takes a lot of time out of your day that you’d rather be spending either relaxing or getting small things done around the house, and it’s not always very fulfilling.

Obviously, you still have to get your work done – otherwise you won’t be making money. In order to keep up with your work, especially when working from home, you have to avoid the temptation of doing other things.

When you’re working for a large company in an office, it’s not so hard to stay on track. There are people around you frequently, and if you’re goofing off and watching Netflix during work hours, people are going to know.

However, while working from home, kicking back and relaxing instead of doing work is much easier. If you’re working on your own computer, you’re just a click away from watching some TV or movies, or a second away from pulling out your phone and checking social media.

For some, avoiding the temptation isn’t too difficult. You might be able to just set it all aside and get all of your work done before you choose to relax, and if that’s the case, that’s great!

However, some people have a more difficult time resisting the urge to go and do something that they enjoy instead of doing somewhat tedious work. One trick for people like this is to use a sort of reward system.

For doing a certain amount of work, you can engage in a specific amount of down time. If you do an hour of work, you can watch an episode of your show. This isn’t exactly a permanent solution, but it should instead be used to wean yourself off of these distractions so that you can really have a full workday to get as much done as possible.

Alternatively, if you’d like to easily cut yourself off completely, there are lockdown programs you can install that will block you from accessing certain websites, such as Netflix, during hours that you’re supposed to be working.

This option essentially makes your computer only able to do work related things during the hours that you want it to, and even on certain days. It’s understandably tempting to blow off work when nobody’s around and you have the freedom to do so, but in order to grow your business and bring in a good amount of money, you need to fully commit to working hard and not get sucked in by random distractions.

OK, now you have managed to avoid temptation, here is the second tip that can help you to stay focused on the task(s) at hand…

Tip 2: Allow Yourself The Right Kinds Of Distractions

Part of being creative is being somewhat distracted by the world around you, because it allows you to draw a great amount of inspiration that you can channel into your work. The problem is, when people think about being distracted, they think about the wrong kinds of distractions.

Instead of being distracted by things that can help you be more creative, you might be getting distracted by things that can make you completely unfocused and uncreative. One of the most common types of sabotaging distractions is social media.

Most social media apps and websites have been designed quite cleverly to keep you scrolling and scrolling for hours on end. Never-ending timelines and feeds can have you hooked for far longer than you may realize, and they seldom contribute to your creativity.

In fact, even if you’re only following things related to what you’re being creative with, you’re still not going to be coming up with many of your own ideas, and instead might end up accidentally ripping off something or someone else.

Another major distraction for people is video streaming services. There are so many popular ones out there, from Netflix and Hulu to YouTube or Twitch. All of these can easily suck you in, just like social media, and you’re still going to be uncreative during the entire process.

The reason these distractions aren’t very helpful is a simple one. The whole point of being unfocused to boost your creativity is that it helps broaden your vision, and instead of being hyper-focused on one little thing, you’re more open to the world around you.

With things like social media and online streaming, you’re still very focused, just on something unrelated. Being distracted and being unfocused are not entirely the same thing.

Being unfocused is like going for a walk in the park with nothing in particular on your mind. You’re able to absorb all the little things around you, whether you notice it or not, and your mind isn’t crowded by something else.

This allows you to gather more inspiration to fuel your creativity. Even if you’re unfocused, you can still have creativity at the forefront of your mind, so you can at least try to pick up on things that can help you be more creative.

Distractions, on the other hand, just give you something else to focus on. If you’re really invested in a show and you’re watching it closely, you’re going to be heavily immersed in what’s going on. That doesn’t leave much room for your mind to wander or for you to be creative.

Having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to stay focused, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 🙂

4 Step Goal Setting Strategy

Everyone has certain goals they want to reach. It might be weight loss or finances in your personal life, or specific business growth goals in your career. Regardless of what milestones you want to achieve, you won’t get there if all you have is the end result in mind.

Setting goals is just one part of the equation. Knowing how to get there is the piece of the puzzle that so many people leave out, which leads them to flounder, procrastinate and veer off course until one day they realize they’re completely off base and have wasted a lot of time and effort.

There are four easy steps you can take to ensure your goals are met. It’s a process that allows you to map out where you want to be and take steps to get there with ease.

Step 1 – Know Your End Result

In order to know what steps you need to take, you have to know how you’d like your journey to end. This is your outcome or end result. You have to be able to concretely define what you want that result to be.

This is the bottom line of everything that you’re attempting to do. Many people aim for something without ever knowing what they want the end result to be. The problem with not knowing your end goal is that you won’t realize it once you’ve reached it – if you even reach it at all.

Let’s say that you take up running for the exercise. Your end result could be to lose weight or get in better shape. Now let’s say that you set a more specific goal to take up running because you want to run in a marathon that’s happening in the future.

Your end result changed from a generic goal of losing weight and getting in better shape to the end result of competing in the marathon, which has a specific length and is on a specific timetable.

Only you will be able to determine your end goal. It might be to finish college, grow your business by $50,000 in the coming year, lose 25 pounds, and so on. Have a large, verifiable goal to reach.

Knowing the end result is imperative for whatever it is that you want in life. You need to know this to be able to work your process. This might mean that you figure out different end results for different areas of your life.

It’s okay to have one for the personal side of your life for relationships and things like that while having another one for your professional goals. Don’t just say, “I want to be happier.”

What would make you happier, specifically? Visualize that end goal that you want. For now, don’t worry about timing. You’ll be working on that as you develop your specific goal setting strategy.

Step 2 – Craft Mini Goals

Goals are something that can be used to improve your life. By having goals, you can check to see if you’re on track for how you want your life to turn out. Goals are helpful tools that can keep you headed in the right direction when you need to make a decision that involves changing some aspect of your life.

Encouragement is a by-product of having goals. Whenever you have a setback, goals can encourage you to keep going. By seeing how far you’ve already come, you realize that you’ve already made some strides forward.

Most success-minded people will focus on short-term goals over long-term goals because these are easier to make come true. Living in a results-oriented world causes people to lean toward short-term goals more often.

Dreamers who do very little action taking often focus on long-term goals, forgetting that they need a specific path to get them there. They stay paralyzed, feeling the long-term goal is too far out of reach.

Having short-term goals means that these are things that you do in the present or in the very near future – such as within a week or a month. An example of a short-term goal might be setting up an email autoresponder system within the next 14 days so that you’re ready to build a list.

A long-term goal is usually something that you can’t reach as fast as a short-term goal. A long-term goal is one that you plan to reach within a few months or a year or longer after making it.

Long-term goals will be realized over time as each of your shorter milestones are achieved. For instance, your long-term goal might be to have a list of 100,000 subscribers.

So, your short-term goals might be:

Set up an email autoresponder system within 14 days
Create a 10-day follow-up series for the autoresponders within 30 days
Achieve a list of my first 1,000 subscribers using social media within 6 weeks
Grow my list to 2,000 subscribers within 2 months using a giveaway event

…and so on.

Each time you’re able to look at your list and cross off an item that you achieved it helps you build momentum toward reaching your ultimate goal. Whatever your goals are, you shouldn’t let them just sit there as nothing more than an internal dream that you have.

You need them around visually so that they can help remind you of what you desire out of life. You need to be able to see whatever it is that your goals are so that you’re reminded to take action.

You can create a vision board with pictures that will help keep you motivated. Or you can write them down in a notebook and list the reasons why you want that goal.

Studies have shown that goals that are visualized or written down are reached more often than goals that are not. It spurs you forward into doing all of the small steps needed to send you up the ladder of success.

Reaching any goal will require you understanding what it is that you already possess that can help you meet that goal. It also takes you understanding what you lack in reaching that goal so that you can level up your skills to achieve it.

If you wanted to run a marathon and you were in fairly good shape, you would understand that your physical condition was something you already had. But if you were out of shape, you would understand that you couldn’t run a marathon until you got into shape.

You would understand that you lacked the physical conditioning. Defining that would help you set mini goals of getting fit, so that would then feed into your larger goal of the marathon accomplishment.

You can dig down and create mini goals for as many sub-levels as you want, too. For example, physical conditioning is a mini goal to competing in the marathon. But what are some mini goals for the physical conditioning?

Being able to go the distance of the marathon in a day
Being able to run instead of walking the entire time
Being able to achieve a 15-minute mile

Creating mini goals helps you focus all of your energy on the bigger goal. Focusing on the bigger goal can make you feel overwhelmed and cause you to talk yourself out of trying.

Making mini goals takes the overall goal and reduces it in size so that it’s manageable and doable. You won’t allow yourself to have excuses as to why it can’t be achieved.

Each mini goal that you set needs to be specific, too. This means that you divide these up into tasks. You would need to use a calendar in order to set a date for reaching each task that falls under your mini goal heading.

You then break down the date by the time that you have to work on the goal. When you have goals that have a conclusion date, it helps you stay on track to reach the bigger picture.

Goals, even mini goals with a conclusion date of “whenever” rarely get finished. You need to know when you should start that mini goal and when it needs to be completed.

Give each task under the goal a deadline. For example, a mini goal of walking a 15-minute mile within 15 weeks might require you (if you’re starting from a 30-minute mile) to shave one minute off your time each week.

That’s a doable mini goal, and the timeline is specific enough for you to have clarity in reaching it. Everything that you do under a mini goal should be something that matters. The more specific it is, the better it will be keeping you on track.

Mini goals need to be created in such a way that you’ll be able to see progress. If your goal is to start your own business, then one of your mini goals might be to write a business plan.

Next, you would write down when you need that plan finished by. Another mini goal could be having a mentor look over the plan and give you tips on how to further polish it up.

Each step that you take should have a purpose that propels you toward the end result of your bigger goal. If you can remove the mini goal without it impacting the overall goal, then odds are high that the mini goal may not be needed.

You need to have an order of importance in place before setting mini goals. After listing the mini goal, write down what you gain from reaching that goal. Write down what you have to do to make it happen.

List the deadline that it needs to happen by. Make notes under the mini goal that tell you what you must learn to reach that goal. Is there a class you need to take? A book you have to read or a seminar you must attend?

All of those should be listed under the mini goal. Make sure that you understand if completing the mini goal can be done alone or if you’re going to need someone else’s help with it.

You should list all of the possible roadblocks that could happen during the course of trying to reach each mini goal. After you list the roadblocks, write down all of the ways around them.

What this does is help you be prepared for whenever a setback crops up. They will – and it’s always best to have your offensive strategy in place before you need it.

Step 3 – Brainstorm Action Steps

Before you can take any action, you want to brainstorm ways to achieve your goals and mini goals. You want options, not a single path that you think will work. It allows you to think outside the box.

Some people refer to brainstorming as creatively solving a problem before it happens or while it’s ongoing. Without brainstorming, most people come up with between two and four ways that they can reach their goals.

When you start brainstorming from a research perspective, you often find better ways to do things, shortcuts and money savers. Don’t be afraid to network with others and ask for their best practices, too.

Brainstorming action steps is easy to do. You need a notebook or a writing program on your computer. You start by thinking about the steps that you need to take, and you just write down whatever thoughts pop into your mind.

As you write down your thoughts, you may start to see how some of them are connected and might possibly overlap one another. This will help you see how you may need to prioritize or even group certain action steps.

When you brainstorm, you’re free thinking – and that can often let your mind pinpoint a better way to do something. Some people find it helpful to brainstorm on their own, while others can’t seem to move their mind away from a certain focus in order to come up with action steps.

If this happens, it can be helpful to brainstorm with someone else who understands the end result that you want. Brainstorming with someone else is as simple as having a conversation.

You simply tell them what you want to accomplish and say that you’re trying to come up with action steps that you need to take. Many times, having someone else to bounce ideas off of can yield new ways to get things done that you may not have thought of on your own.

Brainstorming can also be helpful when it comes to seeking a solution about an action step. Some action steps require more effort than other ones do. You may end up needing to do more or find additional help.

If you don’t have someone to connect with as a personal contact or even an online forum friend, you can start researching the best way to achieve certain goals online.

Be very specific when you search. For example, if you needed the mini goals to build a list, you might type in “steps to build a list” and see what came up. You might discover a blog post or infographic that details these steps:

Define your target audience
Create a viable opt in offer
Sign up with an email system
Set up the list responders
Create a squeeze page
Promote your opt in offer

Maybe you didn’t have one of those listed in your mini goals, but now that you’ve seen it online, you can add it. It’s easy to forget all of the small steps involved in achieving a larger goal, and you don’t want to forget something important along the way or feel caught off-guard if you realize it in mid-stream and have to reorganize your goals on the fly.

It shouldn’t require much time to brainstorm – or research. If you’re visiting other sites, just pop in quickly, scan the resource to see if you already have those steps on your list, and jot down anything that might be missing.

Step 4 – Implement Changes

Once you’ve finished, it’s time to take action. You’ll be putting into place the ideas that were generated from your brainstorming session. When you begin to implement change, you have to understand that it’s normal to feel a sense of unease.

Most people are resistant to change. Just know that it’s normal and don’t let it throw you off course.

Create motivation as you start making changes. You have to be your own biggest fan when it comes to what you’re doing. Celebrate all of your small milestones. It doesn’t have to be expensive or huge – just recognize your efforts and honor your accomplishments.

The fact that you’re working toward a goal and doing things to get you to the finish line is something that should be respected and admired. Sometimes, there’s nobody there but you to toast to your success.

Keep your vision. When you’re implementing change, you don’t want to lose sight of your goal. Understand the value of the changes that you’re making. In other words, realize what will happen if these changes don’t take place.

As you implement change, make sure that you monitor what happens as you make the change. You want to be alert to head off any negative situations or obstacles that arise from implementing your action steps.

There will be some obstacles that you can’t foresee and that you can’t head off. For those, you’ll want to try to get to the root of the problem quickly. Understanding why there’s a difficulty implementing a change can help you know how to get back on track.

You also want to keep in mind that while you’re implementing change now, you’ll see some small benefits right away. However, seeing the end result of some of the other changes may take a little time.

As you implement these changes, make sure that you’re continually revising your goals because as these changes take place, your goals will also change. It’s okay to fix goals along the way, too.

Sometimes, when you’re on the path to something greater, and you’re educating yourself, you discover fantastic new ways of doing things! This might mean changing a mini goal, or even altering your large goal completely!

One thing you shouldn’t do, though, is allow yourself to get distracted by too many good possibilities to the point that you’re forever chasing a shiny new object and never following through on the action steps you’ve mapped out to reach one milestone in your personal or professional life.

Having a strong mindset is critical to any goal setting strategy, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 🙂

An Online Business Model Any New Marketer Can Succeed In

You don’t have to have any experience to be successful with an online business. Anyone can succeed – even if you’re brand new to working at home because you can learn as you go along.

There are many different avenues you can choose to take to get started. Much of your decision will be based on personal preferences, time available to implement it, and tools you need to launch it.

In this post we are going to cover 1 of the best (and simplest) business models to get started online.

By the way, if you are serious about having your own online business, check out Online Business Models For New Marketers . This is a free training that expands on this post and takes you through 4 more business models for you to try so you will have 5 models in total. You can check it out here.

Are you ready? Ok, let’s get started…

Service Provider

A great online business that you can choose is to become a service provider. A service provider is someone who offers his or her services to those who are seeking help.

There are many different types of service providers, and you choose one based on your skills and this is why it is so easy to start as you can build upon the skills you already have.

Are you a good writer? If the answer is yes, you can become a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter is a person who writes for someone else. The type of material that you might write can also vary. Some ghostwriters write blog posts, speeches, press releases or info products.

Some write fiction or non-fiction books for others. As a ghostwriter, unless the contract specifically states otherwise, you don’t get to claim the words that you write. You’re the unseen, unknown writer for someone else unless you have a prior arrangement.

Many celebrities and other public figures hire ghostwriters. You’ll need to have the ability to write in the language you were hired and set a competitive price so people will want to outsource to you.

You might choose to become an affiliate manager. This is a job in which you would oversee the core operations for someone who is selling their own info products. This can be an individual or a business.

The type of tasks that you would do might change day to day. For example, you might be responsible for making sure that the people who wanted to become an affiliate were top quality as well as check out their ability to promote and their promotion site.

This could help prevent the individual or business from being associated with a potential affiliate that was spammy or a scam. As an affiliate manager, you might be tasked with responding to emails and sending out information to potential affiliate recruits.

You might also have to monitor affiliates to make sure that all the promotions are being handled correctly.

Sometimes affiliate managers are paid a salary, and sometimes they earn a percentage of the money the launch brings in.

Another area for a service provider is a VA. This is a virtual assistant, which means you basically help individuals or businesses remotely. So, you might have a client in California while you live in Wyoming.

The type of work that you do as a VA will be determined by the field that you’re in as well as what the client needs.

Sometimes it’s posting articles on a blog. Other times it’s answering emails in a customer service manner.

You could also become a site builder if you want to be a service provider. This is someone who builds an online site for clients.

The skills that you would need in order to this include knowledge of web design language, some graphic design skills (but this isn’t a requirement because you can outsource this task), and communication skills so that you understand the client’s vision.

Becoming an SEO (search engine optimization) expert is a great job for a newbie. You would have to learn how to find the right keywords for the site that you’re working on so that it increases traffic for the client.

You would need to stay abreast of changes within various search engines to see what best practices allow site owners to rise to a page 1 listing on their search engine. It’s more than just knowing keyword phrases.

You’d need to know both onsite and offsite search engine optimization strategies. Learning SEO isn’t difficult. There are courses, both free and paid, video as well as eBooks and other reading material that can teach you.

You might like becoming a service provider because you can choose the type of work that you do and can set your own hours. The amount of income that you can earn is up to you and you can also make money fast as a service provider because the client will often pay upfront or at least half now, half later.

To get started in any service provider area, you would want to make sure that whatever you choose is something that you do enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy it, the work will make you miserable.

You also want to make sure that you either have the skills or can develop the skills that will match the type of work you choose to do. For example, if you’re already good with PhotoShop, you might find that doing graphic design type work is a good fit.

You could create banners, eBooks, images for websites, custom designs for clients and more. If you know that you like to write and you have a good grasp on grammar and punctuation, then you would most likely find copywriting or ghostwriting enjoyable.

Once you choose a niche and learn the skills needed, then put together a portfolio. Some newbies say that this part is a catch 22. They need experience to get the jobs but can’t get the jobs without the experience.

What you can do is showcase work that you’ve done for family, friends or for a charity or cause. For example, if you want to get into providing design services, but you don’t have any previous work that you can show potential clients, you can create a flyer for the local animal shelter – or even make something up just to show samples of your abilities.

You can donate some time and skill to a cause that you believe in and use what you’ve created or done in your portfolio. It doesn’t matter whether the work you’re showing was something that you were hired to do or if it was just a freebie because potential clients just want to see how you compare to other providers in terms of quality and value.

You may want to create a website offering your services. This way, potential clients can look you up and have quick access to your online portfolio. You can create a blog using WordPress for around $10 plus hosting. For great, affordable hosting, go here.

Don’t use a website that makes you use their ads because that looks unprofessional. Make sure you put your site links up on your social media to link back to your website. In your bio, be sure that you mention what you do and that you’re available.

For example, “Graphic Designer (or whatever it is that you do) for Hire” because when people are searching for a service provider, they’ll use the keywords describing the service they’re looking for.

If you want to land clients now, you can start on sites like Freelancer and Fiverr, but the pay as a beginner, especially in the beginning, may be pretty low unless you have specialty skills that are highly sought after.

The advantage of using sites like these is that they do have clients already looking for freelancers and you wouldn’t have to build a site of your own. Whenever you land a job, always have a contract to protect yourself and the client.

If you want to learn about 4 other online business models you can try, from affiliate marketing, to FBA/eBay and more, check out the featured resource below for a free report that expands on this post and covers 5 online business models that you can choose from. Pick one and get started today… 😊

How To Get Visitors To Your Opt-In Page

Despite the recent growth of various online marketing strategies such as social media, email marketing still remains to be the most effective marketing tool for websites. A mailing list is therefore one of the greatest assets a business can possess.

Building this list however is not an easy task. Some websites have even resorted to buying lists in a desperate attempt to increase their subscribers but in the end this proves useless and even damaging.

A good mailing list is one which a website has developed naturally. Such a list contains individuals who have a high potential of becoming loyal customers. To build a good mailing list you need an equally good, high conversion opt in page.

The first step in creating a successful opt in page is increasing the traffic to it. Without people visiting the page, you have no chance of building your list. Below are some helpful strategies through which you can boost the number of visitors visiting your opt in page.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To get as many people as possible to visit the opt in page, you need to put your website in front of as many eyes as possible. The best way of doing this is through search engine optimization.

The proper use of certain rich keywords and key phrases and providing value to your visitors through the content on the website are all effective SEO methods.

With an increased ranking, more web users will see your website and possibly visit it.

Paid Advertising

If you are just beginning to build your mailing list, getting the traffic you need naturally can take time. To jumpstart the list, make use of paid advertising. You can advertise using Google, Bing or Facebook ads among others.

The advantage of paid advertising is that the traffic that you receive is still beneficial since the people who will click on the ad are those who are interested in what you have to offer.

Ensure that you have crafted your ads, especially those on Facebook, well enough so as to attract as many people as possible.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are some of the best social media websites that you can use to triple the traffic being received on the opt in or squeeze page. Facebook is especially effective at this.

All you need to do is create a fan page and then get people to join it.

You can even use Facebook ads to get more fans. Frequently invite your fans to sign up for something and place the opt in page url where they can easily see it.

Be careful however not to spam your fans. Instead, strive to provide value and make offers that they cannot refuse.

Solo Ads

This is another popular method of jumpstarting your list although you will have to pay for it. It involves using someone else’s list to market your website and create your own subscribers.

For instance, if your website is in the health niche, you can find a well-developed almost similar health website and then pay the site owner to email your content or offer to his list.

Of course, you can only use solo ads with other related websites. For those in marketing and business niches, a form of solo ads is Safe Swaps – http://safe-swaps.com

A word of warning though; not all solo ad vendors are made equal and there are a lot of poor providers out there so this is NOT for the novice marketer as you can lose a lot of money quickly. In all honesty, paid advertising via the likes of Google, Bing and Facebook are more reliable.

Forums

Many websites owners do not realize the potential that forums hold in getting more people to visit an opt in page and subscribe to emails. You can easily build a list with hundreds of subscribers simply by using forums.

Just find a popular forum in your niche, sign up and then become an active participant. Answer and ask questions and contribute to discussions.

As you build your authority on a forum, more people will be curious to find out what you are offering.

Article Marketing

Article marketing has long been said that it no longer works. However, it should still be part of your traffic generation strategy, as you’ll still get traffic from those searching for information around a particular topic.

This involves creating short articles, between 300 to 700 words and then posting them on various article directories. At the bottom of each article, you include a url to your opt in page.

To increase the number of people who follow the url ensure that the article contains helpful and informative content and use more than one article directory.

Even better, post the articles to directories in a certain niche rather than general directories. Here’s an article directory where you can submit your articles: http://ezinearticles.com

Press Releases

Media releases are particularly effective at getting people to check out what you are offering.

To increase the effectiveness of press releases, create them regularly and submit them to different news websites.

Guest Blogging

Get in touch with popular bloggers and ask whether you can submit a blog post.

Although you may not get paid for the post, you may be allowed to place a link to your website at the end of the article.

This tactic is all about exposure and you are borrowing the site owners expertise. The more popular the blog, the more traffic you will get.

Contests

People love winning things, and a contest of any kind will receive a lot of attention.

Start a contest on your website and publicize it on social media and ask your fans to share it with their friends.

Ensure that the reward for the winner is appealing enough for people to want to participate.

YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video hosting website. Take advantage of the millions of visitors who visit it every day to boost traffic to your opt in page.

Learn how to create a viral video that is both helpful and interesting. In the video and description, provide a link to the opt in page. You can also encourage people to share their video on their websites for more visibility.

In your effort to get people to visit your website, make sure that they are people who are likely to sign up. Hence your efforts need to be directed towards a specific target group. As you work within your niche, you attract relevant visitors who in the future can easily turn into paying customers.

After you have attained considerable traffic increases, remember that there is also the work of getting people to actually join your mailing list. But once you have established a steady stream of reliable traffic, you have tackled this major first step in email marketing.

If you want to know more about building your list after they have opted in, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further.

Goal Setting Is All About Prioritization

People want to succeed in life. Success is often a result of planning. But what if the items you have on the plan are wrong? This could lead you to a place in your life you didn’t expect and not for the better.

Besides, it means that you have wasted your time. That’s why you need to focus on your priorities in life. These will be a better guide in helping you map out your journey and will influence the kinds of goals you will need to set to reach them.

Start by writing out everything that you feel is important in your life. The items can have degrees of importance and you can put a number scale on each one to indicate which are more important than the others.

After you have listed out your important items, use the number scale to rate the items. You can choose how you want the scale to be measured, but suppose it is 1 being the lowest priority to 5 being the highest. You can do this in a spreadsheet so that you can resort after you have done this for all the items.

Sort from highest to lowest. These are going to be the focal points of your goal setting. You can choose to try and include all the items on your list or you can decide to eliminate any that are below a certain number like all the items that have a priority of 1 or 2.

That is up to you. But you do want to make the list as manageable and as meaningful as possible. If they don’t really mean that much to you they won’t motivate you to achieve them or help you to keep going when you hit an obstacle.

For each of the highest priority items, the next step is to figure out what it will take to achieve them. List out high-level mini goals for each item. You can choose to prioritize these in much the same way, but at this stage of the process, it is not completely necessary.

The next step is to come up with more detailed tasks for the mini goals. You can go as far down as you want or you can stop at just one level. It all depends on the type of tasks you come up with.

If it’s enough to be defined as a work unit, i.e., a task that you can easily perform, then you probably have gone far enough down. If the item can be broken down into further sub-tasks, then that is the next step.

By using this list-prioritization process, you have a much better chance of containing tasks that are the right ones to meet the objectives of your goals.

Now when you have these goals, it’s time to come up with a plan. And it is really useful to come up with a yearly plan before anything else and we’ll have a look at this in more detail now…

Do You Need a Yearly Plan?

Many people don’t believe they need a yearly plan. They believe they know enough about themselves or their businesses to bypass any planning process. Some people can get away with doing this. But, for most, having a plan and updating one on a yearly basis is essential to keep on track.

A yearly plan helps you to focus on what is important. There are too many events and things that happen during the year that we will simply forget about what needs to get done.

The plan lets you see what needs allocation of funding. You can see how your expenses are affecting your bottom line.

If you have employees working for you, a yearly plan can help manage them. You can find out what vacations they are planning, and you can ensure that they are scheduled for training that you may require of them.

You can’t account for everything that they may encounter over the course of the year. But, as long as you have the major events on your plan, you can make alternative plans.

When you implement your yearly plan, you solidify the necessary objectives to advance your organization. You and your employees can use it as a roadmap to make sure everyone is on the same page.

There are going to be changes, and as the year goes on, you may find some initiatives are no longer relevant. But, overall, a plan is a great tool to help your company.

Without a plan, people and companies tend to flounder. They spend more money than they should, and they start projects that they often don’t complete. They have no way of knowing whether those projects are even going to help the company at all.

It’s difficult to work as a cohesive unit when everyone is off doing whatever they feel like doing. Even if you have a manager who delegates the jobs, without a plan, the manager will also create projects as he or she goes.

A plan doesn’t have to be elaborate nor does it need to be exceptionally long. It can be as informational as listing out dates and tasks. Then, assign people to those tasks.

It is important to get everyone to participate, but once you get an agreement, they need to be held accountable. Business is difficult enough without having some kind of plan or map to guide you in the right direction.

Once you have your yearly plan, it is fine to break this down into smaller, more manageable chunks. In fact, this may be advisable as a yearly plan may seem too big to achieve. By breaking it down into monthly, weekly and even daily goals, you can keep on track and reward yourself along the way and before long you will have reached your yearly goal 🙂

Of course, using goal setting exercises and plans takes a lot of self-discipline which many of us lack, so if you want to learn about how to harness the power of self-discipline, please download the featured resource below, read it and take action 🙂

self-discipline

Lead Generation Strategies System Part 4

OK, in the previous posts (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) we talked about the first 3 steps in the process of attracting leads to your business, namely the automation system, so you should’ve picked your autoresponder or CRM of choice and been experimenting with it, creating your lead magnet to entice readers to opt-in and give you their email address and setting up your squeeze page to show readers the free offer.

Step Four: Traffic

The three previous steps were pretty easy. Even if you create your own lead magnet from scratch, and you need time to learn how to use your autoresponder or CRM, you can complete the other three steps in a few days at most.

You might think traffic is the hardest part, but it’s actually a lot simpler than you think to get traffic! We’re going to take a look at a few of the best strategies for getting traffic, both free and paid.

Free Traffic

As far as free traffic goes, there’s only one method that’s quick enough to generate traffic starting today, doesn’t have a hefty learning curve, and provides quality traffic that can convert: social media.

Keep in mind that certain markets are more inclined to use certain social networks than others, so it’s important to locate your market and be certain you’re focusing most of your time and energy on those locations.

While you can still use other social networks, most of your effort should be focused on those sites that have a higher concentration of your target demographic.

We’re going to look at a few of the most popular social networks, and how you can locate your target demographic on each one in order to find out which one(s) you should concentrate on.

Facebook

Locating your target demographic on Facebook is relatively simple. Begin by searching for a topic related to your niche and find pages and groups that fit your niche.

For example, if you are offering a dog walking service, you’d want to search for things like groups for pet owners in your city or state.

Find out how many people are in those groups, and how many groups there are. This will give you a rough idea of how many people you can reach on Facebook.

Join these groups and participate in them, making sure you follow their rules. If they don’t allow promotions, you’ll need to contact the group administrators and ask for permission to advertise your service.

Otherwise, you should be able to pipe in if people happen to ask about dog walking services.

You can also start your own group, which is your best option. This will give you a source of traffic you can turn into leads anytime.

You should also start a Facebook page for your business, and you can even include a link to your squeeze page on your Facebook page.

Pinterest is like an online corkboard. You can have multiple “boards”, and then pin images with links, sort of like bookmarking a page.

You can find out how popular your niche is on Pinterest by performing a search, and then clicking “Boards” to find out how many people have boards related to your niche AND how many followers those boards have.

You can also search pins for the niche and see how many repins each one has. This will let you know how interested people are.

Pinterest has a huge amount of traffic, and it’s relatively easy to access just by following accounts that have some connection to your niche and pinning content related to your niche and using keywords in your board names and descriptions.

You’ll need to have some interesting content to pin, so it’s a good idea to have a blog or website that you use to post content related to your field.

For example, you could have a dog care blog for your dog walking service and post useful information for pet owners.

One important thing to note is that Pinterest is heavily imaged-based, so you’ll need good images to pin that relate to your article.

For example, if you’ve posted an article called “5 Tips for Housebreaking Your Puppy”, you’d want to include a photo of a dog being trained, or something related to housebreaking a puppy, and have the title of your article on the image.

If you take a look at Pinterest, you’ll see that most images are taller than they are wide. That’s because they take up the most screen real estate since images are constrained by width but have much more space to expand lengthwise. Thus, try to make sure your images follow the same format.

Instagram

Instagram is a great platform for visual content, and you can get a lot of traffic from it, especially if your business is related to fashion, beauty, art, lifestyle, food and cooking, crafts, or other topics that are popular.

You can get a good indication of what’s popular on Instagram by opening the app and clicking the search icon, searching for a term related to your niche, and then clicking “Tags”.

This will show you how many posts are currently on the site using that phrase, as well as lots of related phrases.

For example, when I search for “dogs”, I see millions of posts with such hashtags as #dogsofinstagram, #dogs, #dogstagram, and #dogsitting.

You can also click the “People” tab and click some of the top profiles to see how many followers they have. This is another good indicator of interest in your topic.

There are three important steps to getting traffic from Instagram:

Fill out your profile and include a link to your website or squeeze page there. Make sure to choose an interesting photo of either yourself or something related to your niche for your profile picture. And include that link because you can’t include links in the descriptions of your individual posts! (Just tell people to check your profile for a link.)
Post often. Instagram posts scroll by and are gone quickly if someone is following a lot of profiles, so the best way to get seen is to post as often as possible. Don’t spam! Just a few posts a day is fine, but spread them out every few hours. And don’t forget to add at least 5 relevant hashtags to every post!
Follow people who are related to your niche. Many will follow you back, and others will find and follow you from those people’s profiles. It’s a good idea to follow at least 20 new accounts each day, which you can find easily through the search function and referrals from other people. Stick mostly to following accounts related to your niche, because you want qualified leads, not just a high follower count!

Other Social Networks

There are other social networks that can be effective, too, depending on your market. I suggest giving each of these a try to see how they do for your particular market, but you might want to concentrate your efforts on the other sites we’ve talked about earlier in this chapter.

Paid Traffic

I don’t recommend using paid ads until you’ve thrown a good amount of free traffic at your squeeze page for a while and tested conversion rates.

If you aren’t getting many leads, you may want to make some tweaks to your squeeze page and/or lead magnet to increase those conversions.

Once you’re happy with how your page is converting, you can start sending some paid traffic to it.

Let’s look at some of the most effective paid ad platforms. These are generally the most profitable, but they may not work for all niches equally, so be sure to track your conversions carefully, tweak ads as needed, and kill any ads that aren’t performing.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is generally considered one of the best advertising platforms, because ads are typically affordable and convert well. This is mainly because of how well they are able to target ads to the appropriate parties.

Remember when we talked about how important it is to get qualified leads? Facebook is brilliant for that, because they have incredibly advanced targeting options.

You can target people based on age, gender, location, marital status… just about anything you can think of… PLUS, you can target by interests, shopping habits, and so much more.

Sticking with our example of using a local dog walking business, you can target people in your city, or surrounding cities, AND who are dog owners. You can seriously get THAT specific!

When you create your ad, pay attention to the type of ad you’re creating. The regular newsfeed and mobile newsfeed formats are considered the most profitable.

Keep in mind that the price you pay for your ads on Facebook is heavily based on your CTR (click-thru rate), so it’s important to design the most effective ad possible.

If you notice an ad has a low CTR, pause the ad and make changes. Keep tweaking until you find the right combination to bring in qualified leads at a low cost.

Facebook has a great guide to help you get started:

>> https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide

Bing Ads

Bing’s ad platform isn’t nearly as competitive as many others, because they have much less traffic than Google, Facebook, and some other platforms.

However, you can still get a lot of traffic at a very low price, because the lower competition means you can actually get more traffic than you could at the more competitive sites because in many instances you could be the only advertiser in a genre.

Bing is a PPC platform just like Google AdWords, so if you’re already familiar with AdWords, you shouldn’t have too much trouble.

Bing has a lot of training if you’re not familiar with the platform:

>>https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/training/courses

Other Ad Platforms

There are platforms you can explore as well, such as YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Google AdWords, and many others.

But these can be a little trickier to master than the other three platforms we discussed, as they are either more expensive, more competitive, or harder to master.

For this reason, I suggest exploring other platforms once you’ve mastered the other three we discussed and are getting consistent results.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this 4-part series on lead generation strategies for your business. Now go and put it into action. If you want the whole series in a handy pdf that you can download and refer to at your convenience, you can do that here.

And don’t forget, if you want to know more about building your list of leads, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊

Lead Generation Strategies System Part 3

OK, in the previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) we talked about the first 2 steps in the process of attracting leads to your business, namely the automation system, so you should’ve picked your autoresponder or CRM of choice and been experimenting with it and your lead magnet to entice readers to opt-in and give you their email address.

Step Three: The Squeeze Page

Your squeeze page is your lead generation page. This is a web page created specifically to collect information from people and once they do, your autoresponder will send them an email which will direct them to the page where they can download their freebie.

As you learnt in the previous post, DON’T send them directly to the download page after they sign up because many people will give you a fake email address just to get your gift.

You can send them to a Thank You page that has a simple message thanking them for signing up and letting them know to expect an email from you shortly which will contain the details on how to download their gift.

Your squeeze page should be relatively short. It’s not like a long sales letter. People don’t need that much convincing when something is free, but they do need some.

After all, they don’t want to give up their personal contact details unless they really think your lead magnet will benefit them.

For this reason, squeeze pages should have just enough information to entice the reader into taking action. If it’s too long, people will get bored and leave before they opt in!

Generally speaking, a squeeze page should consist of 5 main components:

Headline – This needs to immediately capture their attention and persuade them to continue reading.
Sub-headline – This provides a little more information and works as your headline’s supporting agent.
Bullet points – Quick, digestible highlights about how your prospect benefits by subscribing to your newsletter or entering your funnel.
A call-to-action – A direct prompt that instructs your prospect how to complete the process of signing up for your free offer.
Your lead generation form – usually generated by your autoresponder service or lead generation service with various form fields and a button to submit the information.

To create your squeeze page, you are going to need some form of page builder.

If you are using WordPress there are many plugins that you can use for this purpose and a few of my favorites are OptimizePress and Thrive Architect.

If you don’t want to be restricted to WordPress, you can use something like Convertri or ClickFunnels and they will also host the pages for you.

The downside is that these are a lot more expensive than the WordPress plugins, but you know they will load really quickly which is something to take into consideration with the limited attention span of readers nowadays!

Quick Tip: REDUCE YOUR WORKLOAD

Remember that you can use done-for-you content (PLR) to create lead magnets quickly. Here are some high-quality PLR vendors in the Internet Marketing and Coaching and Consulting niches:

Content Sparks

Coach Glue

Flaming Hot PLR

If you are in the self-help niche and want some high-quality PLR, then check out Tools For Motivation

Please remember to be careful when using PLR as there is a lot of rubbish out there. If you stick with the vendors above you won’t go wrong. They aren’t the cheapest but they are the best and many of them have some great offers and sales from time to time so sign up for their emails to get notified of any specials they may be doing and grab a bargain 😊

Information To Collect

Most people collect only the name and email address of their leads, but you might need more information than that, depending on your niche market, and whether you wish to further segment your lists and identify potential customers through demographic based data.

The name and email address of potential customers is probably enough information for general marketing purposes, but what if you’re selling a higher-end product or service like real estate or legal services, or something that requires one-on-one contact like coaching, you’ll want to begin collecting as much information as possible to help you better connect with potential customers.

In cases like this, it’s probably a better idea to ask for name, address, telephone number, and email. You might even need additional information, such as date of birth (if you’re selling something for adults only, for example) or even more detailed information, such as the breed of dog they own, or their income.

You don’t want to ask for too much information—which will just cause people to get frustrated and leave without filling out your form—but you want to get just enough information to make sure they’re qualified.

In other words, what information do you really need to know upfront, and what can you gather later in the selling process?

Once your squeeze page is set up, and you’ve added the lead magnet to your autoresponder service, it’s time to start sending traffic to your squeeze page and we’ll look at that in the final part of this series…

Don’t forget that if you want all 4 posts in this series in a handy pdf that you can download and refer to at your convenience, you can do that here.

And remember, if you want to know more about building your list of leads, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊