Anyone who’s been trying to make money online for more than 2 minutes would have heard this line repeated ad nauseam – “You need to create your own product!!!”
Maybe 2 minutes is an exaggeration, but you get the idea.
If you’re competent at traffic generation, you’ll get to keep 100 percent of the profits from the sales you generate. You can also recruit affiliates to promote your products and expand your market share while skyrocketing your income.
Once you’ve mastered product creation, the possibilities are endless when it comes to boosting your online income. As good as this sounds, there are a few fundamentals that must be in place for you to succeed at digital product creation.
This is without a doubt the most important factor of the lot. While creativity is a marvelous trait to have, trying to invent a new digital product that sells like hot cakes is infinitely more difficult than improving upon existing ones.
The case of not reinventing the wheel holds true here, and the key to succeeding with your digital product is to see what’s currently popular and selling well – and emulate these winning products.
You’ll create a similar product which addresses the same topic, but from a different angle. This is where your creativity needs to shine.
Both Nike and Puma sell athletic shoes, but the former tells you to “Just do it!” with a swoosh symbol, while the latter is the only major sports manufacturing company on the planet with no slogan but lets the logo of the powerful leaping puma say all that’s needs to be said about the brand.
Similar products… but very different USPs.
Spend time researching and making notes on what products are selling well and think of how you can improve upon them. Then go ahead and create a better product.
Watching what your competitors do will help you navigate the marketplace and understand why some vendors excel and some fail.
Can you create a product that bridges the crevasse of customer dissatisfaction? If you can, you’ll have people flocking to buy your product.
Once you’ve done your market research, it’ll be time to niche down and create a product for a specific topic.
So many newbies falter here and make the cardinal error of trying to create a 5000-page magnum opus that aims to fix ALL ills in that niche.
Need to lose weight? Here’s a weight loss book with a 5-step plan. Want to get build a chicken coop? Here’s a manual with 50 chicken coop plans and instructions you can use today.
Specific problems and specific solutions. That’s your secret to creating a digital product that’s not only valuable, but doesn’t overwhelm the reader either.
Your digital product is not the bible. It’s not supposed to be for everyone. You must create a product that addresses a specific type of person.
You’ll need to construct a customer avatar before you start working on your product.
For example, if you’re writing a weight loss book, is it going to be for women? How old will the reader be?
So many questions and so few answers.
What do you do?
Simple. You hang out in forums where your target market congregates. Spend time reading their questions, issues, comments, etc. This will help you to understand their problems intimately and you’ll have a finger on the pulse of your market.
Now you’re ready to create a product that speaks to them better than their best friend could.
This is the part where you create your product. It goes without saying that you should produce the best possible product that you can. Aim for excellence, NOT perfection.
If you’re using video, it’s ideal to break down a 1-hour long video into six manageable 10-minute videos. In our noisy world, so many people have the attention span of a housefly. So, you want your content to be short enough to hold their attention, but long enough to give them the information they need.
Times have changed. PDFs alone are not enough. Some people prefer reading. Others prefer watching videos… and many like listening to audios.
Provide your digital product in different formats (text, audio & videos) so that you capture as many customers as possible without inadvertently excluding any. Of course, you may choose to sell your audios and videos at a higher price.
Last but not least, you’ll need to price your product according to what the market is willing to pay. If you overprice it, you’ll alienate most of your potential customers, and those who do buy it may feel like they’ve not gotten their money’s worth because they expect a lot more.
If you underprice it, you’ll be devaluing your product and leaving money on the table.
To conclude, once you have these 7 fundamentals in place and you have a great product to sell, you’ll then need to market it well… but that’s a whole different topic for another day. For now, get the product creation basics right and it’ll be half the battle won.
If you want to know more about creating a profitable online course, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
Negative thoughts are the nemesis of creating a successful business – and life – for yourself. It’s difficult to drown out the thoughts that corrupt your thinking and prevent the flow of energy to make yourself better, but there are some ways to calm a racing mind and stop the flow of negativity that threatens to bring you down.
Perhaps you just need some quiet time – time for yourself to ruminate on the positive things you’ve accomplished. Meditation is one way to achieve the quiet time you need to get your thoughts under control.
Whether you meditate in the forest, next to a babbling brook or in a quiet place in your home with the television and other devices turned off, the quiet you’ve created can be a catalyst for more creative and positive thought patterns.
When you’re meditating, you may want to try positive affirmations as a way to quiet your brain and push out negative thoughts and feelings.
An affirmation can be as simple as repeating to yourself that you’re stronger than all of the negative thoughts that come your way and that you can and will overcome them.
Journaling is also a good way to get your negative thoughts out of your mind, onto pen and paper and see them for what they are.
It’s a fact that writing is an exercise that seems to reinforce and help you understand things better than typing or even speaking. Journaling helps you work out problems that may have cluttered your thinking in the past.
Reinforcing the positive messages you receive from yourself or others is an important and viable way to drown out negative thoughts.
The above methods of affirmations, meditation and journaling are valuable tools to ensure that negative thoughts and feelings don’t remain in your life and that you can continue progressing to a more positive inner state of mind.
When weeding negative thoughts out of your life, make sure you surround yourself with positive people whenever you can.
It’s easy to be influenced by people who always spout negativity and seem to want everyone around them to feel the same way.
Of course, it’s impossible to feel upbeat all the time. Life is sure to get you down once in a while. But find a way that works for you to silence the negativity and stop being so hard on yourself.
The fallout from self doubt can be devastating and render you incapable of continuing to make rational business decisions. It’s like flailing yourself with a whip day in and day out – a torture so blistering that all you can think of the pain it’s causing.
When you let the exhausting task of doubting yourself take over your life, you’ll be less likely to seize opportunities and have a more difficult time in beginning or finishing tasks that could bring you success.
Moving forward can be difficult as the voice of self doubt becomes louder and drowns out the reality of who you are and what you’re capable of.
Standing up to the chatter and telling the chaos and loudness to stop can help you break the destructive pattern of low self esteem.
It’s like turning the flame down under a pot of soup that’s about to boil over. You take over control of your thoughts rather than letting your mind overflow with doubt and take those thoughts where you want to go.
This time could be different if you don’t allow the voices to take control. Each time you leave your comfort zone and ignore the self doubt torture, you come closer to realizing a positive outcome to your efforts.
Self confidence will replace self doubt and you’ll finally be able to focus on your future success rather than past failures. Silencing the exhausting torture of self doubt will also boost your optimism about the future.
You’ll become more confident about your abilities and motivated and enthused about your ideas. Take action even though you don’t feel like it.
Freeing yourself from the loud and destructive self doubt voices – if only for a few minutes – can calm the voices and help your mind find clarity and creativity.
You can always tweak the immediate actions you take later on. The real task of the moment is to get feedback, knowledge and experience so you can build your self-esteem and empower yourself to success.
Conquering self doubt frees you to stay on the course and reach the goals you’ve planned for yourself. Don’t let the voices of self doubt exhaust you to the point of abandoning your future success.
Beginning an Internet marketing business with a product launch that’s much less expensive than some of your successful colleagues (who love to post their earnings from one launch that would pay your bills for months) can help alleviate some of your self-doubt.
Starting on a small scale – perhaps a $7 product instead of a $97 one – can mean less work to get it off and running and a launch that can teach you a thing or two.
The feedback and knowledge you get from beginning with a small launch is invaluable to help you move up to higher ticket items.
You’ll likely build your list with each small launch, too – meaning that when you do get to the big ticket launches, you’ll have more marketers who will buy from you. With each small launch, your self-confidence will build and self doubt will begin to wane and destroy your lack of confidence; you will feel empowered.
Even the small launches may fail, but that’s a good thing, too – when you use the knowledge you gained to set your focus on something else or to use another strategy because the current one isn’t working.
You won’t have lost much time and energy if you discover these truths from a small launch. Self doubt is often made up from failures of the past, but your small successes can provide positive thoughts about the positive outcomes you’ve realized.
The positive feedback you receive from small successes may serve to set you up for huge success. There’s always something new to learn in Internet marketing.
You’ll soon discover if something works – or not – and can quickly tweak or discard it at your discretion. Little will be lost if you haven’t invested a great deal in something you lack knowledge about.
Correcting your course along the way is the same thing pilots do when they’re approaching a bit of unexpected bad weather before reaching their destination.
Look at the charts again, learn from the experience you’ve gathered during the small ventures and correct your course so that you’re firmly on a safe and steady path again.
Learn from other marketers. Follow the business path of others to possibly discover more ways you can promote yourself and become successful with your own enterprise.
It’s sometimes easy to get lost in your own little world of strategizing and promoting, but you may become stagnant if you don’t allot some time for learning from others.
Trust your instinct and values when making decisions about your business. There are many shady marketers out there who might turn your head with promises of fast money, but if you stay true to your own values, self-confidence will become the antidote to any self doubt you may have.
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and overcoming negative thoughts and self doubt is a small part of this. So, if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
You may have heard marketers say, “Email marketing is dead” … or email deliverability rates are low these days. The list of complaints is many and by all appearances, it seems like email marketing is getting tougher now because more and more subscribers are wary and jaded.
Marketing emails are viewed skeptically, and subscribers are much more discerning now. This is why some marketers have started using platforms like Facebook Messenger or bot services such as ManyChat or MobileMonkey because engagement is generally higher, but that doesn’t always convert into leads or sales.
Yet, there are a handful of marketers who excel at email marketing. They have high open rates, high click through rates and their emails get them a ton of sales and commissions.
So, how do they do it?
Ultimately, you need to be an honest and transparent marketer who is unique enough to stand above the noise. This is crucial to building trust and getting you noticed by your subscriber.
Don’t think of your email list as simply a cash cow to promote your (or affiliate) products or services, but rather think of them as your tribe.
Once you can achieve these 2 goals, getting people to open your emails and buy your products or the products you recommend will be a breeze.
You must treat them well and make them realise that you are simply trying to help them. The fact that you may make money by them buying your products or services is simply a byproduct of your helping them to succeed. Of course, this need to be a genuine desire to help them; you will NOT be able to fake this, so don’t even try!
Use the 5 pointers below to boost your open rates by winning your list over with your personality
This is a HUGE factor when it comes to building trust with your list. You should always promote or sell products that are of high-quality and will get the buyer their money’s worth.
In the short run, this may work… but over time, their list will stop trusting them and the sales will dry up faster than a wet towel in the Sahara desert.
Do your research on the product, the product creator, the price, the pros and cons, etc. This will allow you to give an honest review of the product and if it’s something that you wouldn’t buy… do NOT recommend it.
One of the best ways to inspire your list to buy the product you’re recommending. Even if you received a review copy or a complimentary gift in return for a promotion, go ahead and buy the product if you like it.
This will show that you too have skin in the game and you’re truly recommending something that you believe in.
Test the product out and see if it works. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfume or some ‘make money online’ (MMO) eBook that promises profits.
If the answer is yes to all of the above questions, then you can promote it knowing full well that it’s good. Do not blindly pass off the claims on the sales copy as gospel when doing a review.
This is very common among online marketers who promote products in the MMO niche. On one day they may be praising a particular YouTube video ranking software and saying that it’s the ‘last one you’ll ever need.’
A week later, when a new but similar video ranking software is released, they’ll promote this like it’s the best thing you’ll ever need.
You can then share your knowledge and tips with the list and show them the results you got from using the software.
You’re supposed to promote and also help your subscribers learn to use what they buy. You can create tutorial videos, blog posts. etc. to guide them. You are limited by your own imagination as far as delivering value goes. That’s what a wise marketer would do instead of pushing every piece of junk that hits the market.
As a marketer, you’ll need to stand out from the rest. There are many ways to do this. You could use photos of yourself in your emails or have an attractive personality that comes across in your emails.
A sense of humor or brutal honesty or links to videos that you’ve made will help your readers get to know you better.
If you can practice these 5 tips and make them second nature to your email marketing, your open rates will skyrocket, and your subscribers will look forward to your emails.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
Lao Tzu once said, “Govern a nation as you would cook a small fish. Don’t overdo it.”
This saying is very true and applies to us when it comes to governing our lives too. Society these days is extremely stressful and moves at a breakneck pace.
We want more, we want it faster and very often, we want it yesterday. We want to be the best and have the most in the least amount of time.
Mental health issues are at an all-time high. With the advent of technology and this era having the most conveniences available, you’d expect life to be easier… and yet it’s more difficult and burdensome than ever before.
The key to achieving work-life balance in this insane world, will be to adopt a few tips and abide by them like your life depended on it.
There’s a saying that ‘perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order’ and that’s undeniable. With social media so prevalent, people often feel a need to appear perfect to others. They seek validation like never before.
Filters are used for photos. Extreme measures are taken to portray a glossy lifestyle that’s worth of a magazine cover.
While it’s good to challenge yourself to do the best you can at work, aiming for perfectionism will stagnate your progress and leave you feeling drained.
There’s only so much you can do. Trying to have a million dollars in the bank account, washboard abs, a beautiful supermodel as a wife and fame all at the same time is highly unlikely to happen for most people.
Very few people achieve all these goals, and yet, these outliers are held as the paradigm of success instead of being treated as exceptions to the rule.
Most people struggle to control their eating habits. Just reining this one habit under control will be a Herculean task.
Don’t be a victim of unrealistic expectations. Write down your goals and make plans on achieving them – but give yourself a reasonable amount of time.
Want six pack abs? No problem. Try and get them over 8 months instead of 3. If you’re overweight, then give yourself a year. What’s the rush?
You have time. Don’t mess up your work-life balance by spending hours at the gym and neglecting other areas of your life.
Like they say, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. In the same way, break down your goals into micro-goals with multiple checkpoints along the way until you reach your destination.
Slow and steady wins the race. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour. Approach life the same way and remember to rest and relax in equal proportions to your work.
This is an all-too-common scenario that affects thousands of people all over the world and it’s especially prevalent in entrepreneurs and artists. You love your work so much that you just can’t switch off.
You’re either working more than you planned to or you can’t stop thinking about work even when you’re trying to sleep or in the middle of other activities such as eating, watching a movie and so on.
Confucius once said, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
While that is true when it comes to finding job satisfaction and not dreading work, it doesn’t give one the license to obsess about work at the expense of everything else.
You still have to look after your health, your relationships, etc. Work is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Below you’ll find 5 ways to help you switch off from work and find peace and satisfaction in other activities.
Try and create an interesting life for yourself. If you have something fun to do after your work, you’ll be more engaged in the activity rather than doing mental gymnastics thinking about your work.
The change of scenery will help to break monotony and give you a mental break from the constant whirring of gears in your own mind.
Be fun. Do fun things and enjoy life. It’s not all about work.
Avoid checking your emails and answering work related calls once your working hours are over. You don’t want to risk getting sucked back into ‘work mode’.
Handle work issues during your working hours and switch off all access to you once you’re done for the day. It’s imperative that you draw boundaries if you wish to mentally switch off from work on cue.
Avoid discussing work or work-related incidents when you’re back home. Find new topics to speak to your family about. Discuss plans for the next vacation. Or ask them what they’re watching on TV or how their day went.
Appreciate the time you have with them. In time to come, it’s these memories that you’ll fondly look back on.
Pick up a new hobby that you enjoy. It could be something you’ve always wanted to do. Rock climbing, yoga, knitting, dancing, learning a new language, etc. are all opportunities to stretch your mind and body.
Try not to be competitive about it and just seek to enjoy the hobby for what it is – something to pour your passion into. It shouldn’t become a new job.
When you have a hobby you love, you’ll be glad to leave work and go work on your passion.
At the end of the day, work is a part of your life. It is not life. Understanding the difference will help you to treat work as an important activity but not an overarching one. Find balance and both your work and life will improve.
“Is there a place you can go to break away for a little while? If you haven’t yet built your tree house, it’s never too late to start.”
Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and maintaining a healthy work life balance is a small part of that. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
E-commerce is a cutthroat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest.
Each day, more and more sites are clamouring to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.
Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a site’s success in SEO marketing.
You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.
But it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I said before, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make themselves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better every day.
So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.
With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turnout of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turnout of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two sales, if any at all.
So once again, what is search engine optimization? Well, SEO is a strategy of using tools and methods to make your site rank highly in the results of search engines.
Getting yourself on the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic; traffic that could lead to potential income and business.
Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change on your site or add as well to obtain great search engine optimization.
These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regard to your sites niche or theme.
You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you can get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.
Try to search the internet for some useful tricks. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plentiful. Read as many articles as you can that will help you optimize your site in search engine results.
The more knowledge and information you gather, the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort on your part, but the benefits will be astounding.
If you can part with some money, there are many sites on the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site.
There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.
Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result in better traffic and more business for your site and company.
Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word: Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful will always include the importance of generating traffic.
So, we all know that at the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing for a successful internet-based business company.
Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken care of, it is now time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.
If you already have a site and you don’t think that you’re getting the traffic that you deserve to be getting, then it’s time to reconsider your search engine marketing strategy.
Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone else.
Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been done yesterday.
To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are seven sure-fire ways to increase your traffic starting yesterday.
1) Invest in good advertising with search engines
Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very popular and assures great traffic. Although this sure-fire way to increase your traffic will cost some money.
While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is a top way to increase your traffic.
You can see for yourself the success that these search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of sites feature these advertising system and many have signed up to reap the benefits.
Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.
2) Exchange or trade links with other sites
When exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they will provide one another with the traffic one site generates.
The efforts are doubly beneficial because it appears that both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites, the more traffic can be expected.
3) Use Viral Marketing
Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any cost virtually, or low cost if any.
This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz.
With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many of their friends; the key is to know what is trending in your niche and jump on it as quickly as possible.
4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content
Search engines look for certain keywords (SEO Keywords) that they will show on their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking high in the search engine results.
You could write your own content, or you can hire someone to do it for you.
5) Write articles that can lead traffic to your site
Submit articles to sites that contain the same content that your business deals in. If you sell car parts, write press releases and articles about cars and car parts.
Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as a link back to your site.
6) Join forums and form online communities
Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you have built a solid foundation via your site, people will trust you and your business and will pass this on to others; word of mouth recommendations are very powerful!
Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.
7) Lastly, offer newsletters
If a lot people know about you and your business and they share this with others, you can find loyal traffic that will provide you with even more traffic by their recommendation.
Offering free newsletters packed with value may be shared among friends and this can lead them back to your site, and potentially a sale.
The key is to always overdeliver on everything you do and provide. Do this and the traffic will come as people begin to learn about you and your reputation, and this in turn will help to push your site up the rankings in the search engines, increasing traffic even more!
If you want to know more about SEO, check out the featured resource below for a free report, Simple SEO Keywords which will show you how to research keywords for your content using some great tools; download, read it and take action 🙂
