Online Marketing Business

continuity program

Continuity: The Secret To Reliable Profits

continuity program

When you first get started online, you might be worried. Frankly, you probably should be worried.

Yes, you made sales this month. But will you make sales NEXT month? And how will you pay the bills if you don’t make sales?

It can be scary going from a job where you know exactly how much you’ll get paid and when you’ll get paid to working your own business online.

If you are the entrepreneurial type, then you are probably not afraid of a little risk for yourself but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be diligent when thinking about a new business venture.

Of course, online businesses don’t have the large overheads that physical businesses do, and you can get started for virtually free, but for most entrepreneurs the slowly, slowly approach can be a lot to swallow and they want to dive in head first. Sound familiar??

Once you have your business up and running, what then?

In your business you might have a brilliant month and then two months of starving followed by a mediocre month followed by (hopefully) another great month.

The trouble is that if your business is your sole source of income, you want your profits to be a lot more reliable than that!

Thus, the question becomes, “How do you get stability in your business – and your income -as quickly as possible?”

Or… how do you KNOW for a FACT that next month you can make the mortgage payments and eat, too?

membership site

Simple – continuity programs. Call it what you want – memberships, recurring payments, monthlies, etc.

It all boils down to getting people signed up into a continuity program so you can continue to get paid month after month.

Now you have a choice here: You can either promote other people’s continuity programs or create and promote your own.

If you’re acting as an affiliate, then you don’t have to worry about sales funnels, membership content, customer service and all of that. You just need to focus on making the sales.

Drive the traffic, offer your own bonuses, and do what you’ve got to do to get people signed up.

The problem, of course, is that in exchange for less responsibility, you also have less control and more competition.

The membership site owner has control over content. If s/he takes a “churn and burn” mentality and doesn’t care about keeping members happy, then people won’t stay long. You’ll have to continually make new sales, which isn’t what you’re looking for.

You want stability. That’s why you only want to promote truly great memberships and continuity programs that deliver a ton of value.

As to competition, you are competing with every other affiliate who is promoting the same program.

If you have your own list, then this isn’t that big of a problem. After all, people on your list know and love you, right? And so, they’ll follow your recommendation.

Unless they’re on someone else’s list (they are) who has already promoted the program. In which case, you’re not going to make many sales.

Promoting affiliate memberships is a give and take. Less responsibility, no control and lots of competition.

And this is why you might want to start your own membership. Look around and see what people in your niche desperately want and need, and then fill that want with your site.

Outsource the content creation if you can, so you can focus on the important part – filling it with people.

Use either a WordPress plugin such as Wishlist Member or an independent solution such as Product Dyno to create your membership site.

membership site platforms

Once you’ve got your membership site up and running, it’s time to get busy promoting it. Use every technique you can think of and track everything.

Find out what your best sources of traffic are, and then put all of your effort into just those methods.

For example, maybe you buy traffic from Facebook, Adwords and solo ads. You also get free traffic from guest posting, forums and social media.

9 out of 10 new members are coming from Facebook, so what are you going to do?

Drop all of your other methods and focus exclusively on the Facebook advertising.

Get your conversions up and your costs down and now you have a viable way of getting a continuous influx of new members into your site.

One thing you need to be aware of is that selling a membership can be a big ask with cold traffic and your conversion rate probably won’t be stellar.

So, what you could do is offer them a cheap product upfront to get them into your funnel, and then offer them your continuity program.

You could even offer a 7-day free trial to tempt them in. Also, keep the price of membership low. If your content is good, you shouldn’t need to keep looking for members because they won’t want to leave.

Plus, most folks won’t even notice a payment for $10-20 leaving their account every month.

Another thing to think about is whether you want to be creating content month after month, year after year. You could outsource the content creation if financially viable, or you could create a fixed membership site with 12 months of content that the customer pays to access.

Want even more members? Show affiliates how well your offer is converting, and you can get them to promote your membership site, too.

There are plenty of affiliates out there who want that continuous, month to month income that a good membership site provides. All you have to do is show them that your funnel is converting, and members are sticking.

Naturally, there are a lot more details than this to starting a membership site. But hopefully this gets you thinking in that direction.

Because if you want true financial freedom as quickly as possible and with as little stress as possible, then almost nothing can beat having your own successful membership site.

One more thing – the first site is the hardest. Once you have a membership site that’s clearing at least a couple of thousand dollars each month like clockwork, continue to build on that one while building your second membership site, and so forth.

Create a membership empire to secure your finances, and then you can experiment with anything you like.

Security first, right?

By the way, if you want to know more about outsourcing check out this article here and the featured resource below where you get a free report all about successful outsourcing; download, read it and take action 😊

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blog posts

How To Make Money With Your Free Blog Posts And Articles

blog posts

As a marketer, are you one of those who has a blog or not?

Some marketers don’t use a blog to build their brand or visibility but rather prefer to use more direct response type marketing techniques and have a website to showcase their products with great sales pages and they constantly send paid traffic to those pages.

However, most marketers probably try to incorporate some type of blog into their business to try to gain some visibility using SEO and get some free traffic from the search engines to build the KLT (Know, Like Trust) factor.

Visitors will consume their content, come to think of them as someone they can trust, and will be much more likely to buy from them in future. This takes longer than the direct response marketer but is infinitely cheaper and is a good model for someone just starting out who may have limited capital to put into their business.

It’s the second type of marketer to whom this article is addressed.


By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.


blog post ideas

I’m constantly amazed at how marketers seem to think free content and paid content are two entirely different things. The fact is your most successful blog posts and newsletter articles can make you more money than many of the products you’ve promoted or created in the past an it is super quick to do this and costs you nothing, so what are you waiting for?

The key is to pay attention to how your content is received.

Repurposing content is hardly a new strategy, but it mainly focuses on creating a video from an article, and then extracting the audio from the video, plus perhaps creating an infographic covering the main points so you now have 4 pieces of content instead of just one.

This works great for building brand awareness across multiple platforms and can indirectly lead to sales.

But now let’s take that strategy and put it on steroids and make it a much more direct way to make sales; after all, you are in business to make money!

So, this content repurposing strategy is designed to specifically make you money from your previous content!

ideas for blog posts

Look back at your posts from the past year and see which ones gained the most attention. Which ones did people comment on and forward to others the most?

And don’t just look at blog posts but look at your posts on social media too; these are great because you get instant feedback if it resonates with your audience.

For example, a little 200-word FB post that people are engaging with and liking the content is trying to tell you that you’ve struck gold.

If it’s a longer article, maybe a blog post and it gets great feedback, even better.

You might choose to expand that article into a full-blown product and sell it or you could use it as a lead magnet that leads to a high-ticket offer (either yours or an affiliate offer).

blog post examples

And talking of lead magnets…

If you are producing free reports as lead magnets (and you should be using these to grow your email list) these are another potential untapped goldmine.

Take your most successful free reports and turn them into paid coaching programs. If you have 4 or 5 reports covering roughly the same topic, it is really simple to bundle them up and sell as a full-blown product.

Add some video and/or audio and some weekly/monthly webinars and you have your brand-new coaching program which has a much higher perceived value than a solely text-based product so you can now charge a premium price, all from existing free content!!

The other good thing about using these lead magnets is that you probably have links to offers peppered throughout these reports, so not only can you now profit from previously free material, but you can still profit from readers clicking on the links embedded into the reports.

blog post templates

Answer a customer’s question and then send that answer out to your list and see what happens. Do you get a lot of response? Bam! There’s another product waiting to be made.

This is such a simple way to do direct market research and you will know that the demand is there from your existing audience.

The point is to monitor the reception you receive on every piece of content you create, whether they’re posts, recordings, videos, launches, emails, reports or whatever.

If you’re not sure how something is being received, ask your readers what they thought of it.

Take the most popular topics and expand them or repurpose them into something else. You don’t have to continually come up with new ideas. Instead, figure out which ideas are working and then get most out of those.

And you can also purposely float your idea for a new product by creating a mini version of it as a post and then seeing how people respond.

Do you have 10 ideas for products? Create 10 posts, see which one is the most popular and start working on that product right away.

When creating the posts, if they are long, let’s say 1000 words or more, then offer the reader to download them as a convenient pdf. This is a type of content upgrade and they will need to give you their email address to get the report.

This way, you can easily see in your autoresponder which reports people are signing up for and start creating your product around those topics.

This stuff sounds simple and it is, but it also works so please don’t dismiss this strategy.

And because it is mainly using pre-existing content, you can be up and running in a matter of hours.

If you are just starting out and are building out your first blog, bear this in mind for the future.

And if you want to know the best way to get started with blogging you can check out Rapid Blogging Blueprint, a premium training on creating and monetising a blog the right way.

Or you can simply click on the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊

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Income Streams

How To Earn 5 Income Streams From One Newsletter

residual income

While everyone else has a free e-newsletter or even a paid online newsletter, you might consider going in the opposite direction and having a PRINT newsletter.

You can use a mailing service to print and mail the newsletter for you, making it a hands-off operation once you send them your new issue and updated mailing list.

Formatting the issue is something you can hire out.

Even writing the articles can be outsourced if you don’t want to do it yourself.

But why would you want to do a print newsletter?

You can charge more because it has a higher perceived value than an online newsletter, regardless of your niche.

You have increased credibility. It might not be right, but the fact is a print newsletter is generally going to be viewed as more authoritative than an online newsletter, especially if your target market is older.

With a printed newsletter, you are in their mailbox. You’re on their kitchen table. You’re on the coffee table in the living room or the nightstand in the bedroom. You are in your customer’s homes, and while I don’t know all the psychology behind this, I do know that when they can hold your product in their hands, your customers become much more bonded to you than if you’re simply words on a screen.

Refunds are lower or even non-existent. The act of having to mail the newsletter back to you (the publisher) to get a refund is more work than most people are willing to do. And I know of print newsletter publishers who charge anywhere from $47 a month to $299 a month and do not allow refunds once an issue ships.

How do you make money with a printed newsletter?

You can use any one of these methods or a combination.

1: Subscription Fees

Income Streams

Of course you can make money by charging for subscriptions. Determine what it costs to print and ship, what it costs to obtain a new customer and how long you expect the average subscriber will stay with you.

You can charge more for certain niches, such as highly specialized areas (think fields such as science and engineering) as well as almost any type of investing or how to make money niche. You can likely charge even more if your newsletter is for businesses rather than individuals. 

Then again, you can also publish and mail your newsletter for free and still make plenty of money, as I’ll cover in a bit.

2: Charging For ‘Ride-A-Longs”

online newsletter

Since your newsletter will likely go out in an envelope, there’s no reason why you can’t add in some ride-a-longs.

These are completely separate fliers, brochures and sales cards or sales letters from other businesses who want to target your customers.

When you build up sufficient subscribers in the right niche, you can make even more money from your ride-a-longs than you do from subscriptions.

3: Charging For Ads

residual income

Another option is to sell ads inside your newsletter. Again, you’ll want to have a sufficient number of subscribers to make it worthwhile for your advertisers.

Anyone looking to target your prospects will be a good candidate, as long as they are not in direct competition with you.

It’s even possible to send out your newsletter for free and still make a hefty profit if you do some or all of the following: Target the right readers, charge for ads, charge for ride-a-longs and/or sell your own products via the newsletter.

4: Selling More Products

Income Streams

The added visibility and enhanced credibility a printed newsletter creates will naturally lead to more sales.

And it doesn’t hurt that when your customer is holding your newsletter in their hands, you have no online competition for their attention. Think about selling from a website – you are in direct competition with every other website on the internet for that person’s attention.

At any moment they can click over to Facebook, YouTube, Reddit or whatever. But when they are reading the sales letter you included with your newsletter, they’re not clicking away. They’re READING the sales letter.

You can advertise your products in your newsletter and in your own ride-a-longs. You can also write newsletter articles that make it super easy to recommend your own solution.

Even when promoting a new launch online, who are your subscribers most likely to buy from? The person who sends them a newsletter in the mail each month, that’s who.

You might also create a special inner circle of your paid newsletter subscribers. This inner circle gets special offers and deals your other list members don’t get – just another perk of subscribing.

5: Get Offered More JV Deals And Publicity Opportunities

online newsletter

The enhanced visibility and credibility of a printed newsletter can also result in getting more offers from fellow marketers to do guest posting, be a guest on podcasts and even do profitable joint venture deals.

One printed, paid newsletter publisher I know tells the story of someone subscribing to his newsletter using an alias.

This person was a paid subscriber for 7 months before revealing he was a high level online marketer (8 figures) and wanted to strike a JV deal. That one deal resulted in a very large payday for the newsletter publisher.

And when you approach others with JV deals, it’s much easier to get a yes when you can say you are the publisher of a newsletter.

6: Get More Clients

residual income

Do you perform a service of some type? Coaching perhaps? Consulting? Freelance marketing for non-internet businesses? Whatever it is, you can use your printed newsletter to gain more customers.

Credibility. Knowledge. Trust-worthiness. Being the EXPERT. These are the perceptions your prospects will have of YOU because you are the author of the newsletter they read each month for help, tips, news and advice.

Place an invitation in each newsletter for them to contact you for a consultation. If you don’t hear from them after 3 or 4 issues, call them and remind them of who you are. “Oh yes, I get your newsletter!”

Tell them you’re calling to see how they’re doing and if you can help. They will be flattered. This isn’t a sales call because they know you and like you already.

Know, like and trust. Almost nothing can build that faster than continuous communication of awesome advice in your printed newsletter and an offer to help them. Find out what their current #1 headache is and help them solve it, and you’ll have a client for life.

If you want to know more about increasing conversions in your business, check out the featured resource below to grab a free report which will teach you how to boost your conversion rate. Download, read it, and take action 🙂

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Working At Home

Are You More Efficient Working From Home?

Work At Home

Working at home gives people the flexibility to be at home, while still being able to collect a paycheck. But, does working at home automatically make you get more done?

Many people dream of being able to stumble out of bed and begin their workday. They argue that since they don’t have the commute, they can start right away and essentially work during the time others would be using to commute.

The argument is that it’s less stressful not to have that commute hanging over them.

Being able to spend more time with your family is another benefit people associate with working from home. You can be home when your kids come home from school. You’ll be able to go their afterschool activities such as sports games.

People who work at home learn that it has unintended challenges associated with it. For instance, while it’s nice to be around your family, are they letting you get your work done? Are you spending too much time with your family that is taking away from your responsibilities to your job?

You need to work with your family to set up boundaries. This means you should dedicate a space like an office that you use to work. When you are in the office, your family needs to understand that interruptions are off limits, unless it’s an emergency.

You will also need to handle interruptions by neighbors that may visit. While many of your neighbors will be commuting to work, there are more people working from home today.

This increases the chances that some of your neighbors are working from home as well. It’s tempting when you see them outside, to see what they are up to, etc. It’s okay to do this once in a while, but don’t let it interrupt your job.

Job burnout can happen just as easily when working from home as it does when you commute to the office. In fact, companies may expect more of you when you work at home and your time is going to be more scrutinized.

You may end up working more hours even when you factor in the lack of commuting. Your boss may be inclined to call you up after work hours and ask you to handle some tasks.

If they do this to all employees, then you may not be able to do much to change that. However, if they are singling you out because you work at home and they believe this gives them permission to call upon you, this may be something you need to handle.

So, as you can see, there are some disadvantages to working from home too. However, if you are working from home, it pays to stick to a routine and be organized and the following tips may help.

9 Tips To Help You Stay Organized

Work From Home

Being organized should be a way of life and second nature to you.

That way it’s a habit rather than a chore. Of course it takes time and effort to create the habit in the first place but once you’ve achieved it you want to stay that way.

These nine tips will help you to stay organized every day with very little effort or fuss.

Check In

Start your day by checking your schedule and your to do list.

It may be that you’ve thought of something you need to add.

Prioritize your to do list so that you tackle the important items first.

Plan

As well as your to do list you should plan your day.

Include calls, meetings, chores and goals. You can use pen and paper, a planner (a bullet journal is ideal) or a planning app.

Don’t forget to include scheduled breaks. Make sure to include time for friends and family.

The F.A.R. Rules

The F.A.R. Rules are essential for helping you to stay organized. They apply equally to your personal life as your business.

 File it – if it’s important and needs to be kept (either in paper or electronic form) then file it immediately.

Act on it – if something needs to have action taken for example, paying a bill or making a call, then do it immediately. Then either file or recycle it.

Recycle it – whether it’s junk mail or papers and items you’ve finished with, recycle it immediately once it’s no longer needed.

These rules applies to emails as well as paperwork. By following them you can keep your inbox under control.

Digital Aids

At times technology can be a distraction but there are some items that can help you become and stay productive.

However, choose your devices and solutions with care so that you don’t create more of a problem for yourself.

You may decide that an app to monitor your health and fitness would be a good idea to keep you on track with your goals.

There are also menu planning apps, scheduling, time and project management, as well as household organization apps.

Track

To be successful with your organization skills you need to track and monitor your progress. What’s working and what’s not?

Be prepared to make changes and adjustments to how you do things.

Just because one method of organizing your closet doesn’t work for you it doesn’t mean that another won’t.

Trash It

Don’t keep things for the sake of it.

If it’s not useful or necessary, then throw it out. If you are keeping it then remember to put it away.

That way you keep your surroundings free from clutter and distractions.

Identify

Keep a track of what works for you and keep on doing it.

If something hasn’t been successful then identify what needs to be changed and do it that way the following day.

5 Minute Review

Just like you started your day, end your day with a five minute review.

Celebrate your accomplishments and cross off everything you’ve achieved from your to do list. Remove any inessential or unimportant tasks that are still remaining.

Whatever is left should be added to the next day’s list.

To Do List

Create your to do list for the following day. Include any important tasks that you didn’t complete that day and only important items that need to be done.

Try and limit your list to 10 items or less so that you don’t feel overwhelmed or end the day with a list of unaccomplished items.

Becoming and staying organized doesn’t happen overnight and it does require regular effort. However, you can stay on track by following these nine tips. You can be organized every day with a little planning, time and effort.

If you want more strategies to become more productive check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂

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product launch

Online Marketers: One Simple Shift That “Guarantees” Success

affiliate marketing

It’s my opinion that any online marketer – regardless of niche – who doesn’t do the following is essentially hiking up a rocky mountain barefoot when s/he could be taking the ski lift.

Online marketing boils down to this: We either create our own products or choose affiliate products, and then we spend our precious time, energy and money getting people to BUY those products.

But only a relatively small percentage of marketers make the one simple shift that will catapult them to success.

I’m going to focus on product creators here but this applies to affiliate marketing as well.

Normal Product Launch

product launch

Here’s the traditional launch a product method:

  • You get an idea for a product.
  • You do some research and you believe this product will sell well.
  • You create the entire product.
  • You create the entire sales funnel that will sell the product, including squeeze page, upsells, downsells, sales page, product delivery page, affiliate page, etc.
  • You line up affiliates and convince them to promote your launch.
  • You launch and you make sales and you don’t sleep for a week because of all the customer service requests and affiliate hand holding necessary.
  • Then you pay affiliate commissions, pay affiliate bonuses, pay your web designers and copywriters and all of that if you haven’t already.
  • You’re exhausted. And this didn’t make the kind of money you thought it would, so you…
  • …start over with a new product and new sales funnel.
  • You do this as quickly and as often as you can without going insane.
  • Idea – product – funnel – affiliates – launch – repeat.
  • You realize you’re working 60 hours a week.

Sound familiar?

“New” Product Launch

residual income

Let’s add a twist:

  • You get an idea for a continuity product like a membership, newsletter or software as a service.
  • You do research to confirm this product will likely sell well.
  • You create just a small portion of the product if it’s informational – about one month of content. If it’s software, you outsource the creation of it (unless you’re a coder, which you’re probably not, so let someone else do it for you).
  • You create a page to offer either a free or $1 trial of the product. You could create an entire funnel, but you’re lazy so you just create the one page.
  • You drive traffic (free or paid) and you get your initial members.
  • You continue to get paid on those sales every single month.
  • You see which traffic methods are working and you keep using those.
  • You regularly update the product.
  • You continue to get trial members, many of which continue on as full paying members.
  • You may or may not use affiliates – that’s totally up to you.
  • This same membership sells for years. YEARS. Because you keep updating it.
  • Life is good. You know how much money you will make next month. You work 10-20 hours a month.
  • You’re not breaking your own spirit by continually having to create new products. There is no way you would ever get a ‘real’ job again.

The Power Of Residual Income

affiliate marketing

This second scenario can be just a small launch, perhaps to your own list just to see if it’s going to sell well. You don’t have to sweat the 101 things that go along with a huge launch because this isn’t a: “Sell it hard and get out fast.” kind of thing. You’re selling this membership, newsletter or SAAS for months or years to come, and earning residual income, too.

You can start a membership site in a week and buy enough traffic to see if it’s a winner. If not, tweak it and try again, or get a better idea. You’re not out much money or time. (A full-blown launch can cost you hundreds of hours and a small fortune in copywriting, page design, affiliate contests and so forth.)

You’re essentially giving away initial access, so affiliates are optional. Fancy sales copy is optional. If you’re offering the right product to the right audience at the right price (free or $1) then selling just got a whole lot easier.

And it’s residual. $10 a month. $20 a month. $47 a month. You pick the price. You get 200 new trial members the first week and 100 stick with you – you can do the math. You get 200 new trial members every single week for 52 weeks and half of those stay in the membership for several months – you can do the math.

Yes, there is attrition. But if you’re offering the right newsletter or membership or software, that attrition rate can be surprisingly low. Think of a software someone needs to run their business. Are they going to cancel? Not unless you stop updating.

Think of a newsletter or membership that gives them the crucial info they need to succeed (business or personal, doesn’t matter). Are they going to cancel? No way.

I love products that pay residual income.

I sell my own and I sell other people’s residual products as an affiliate.

My reasoning is simple: Why work myself to death to create products that only pay me one time when I can create products that pay me over and over again? And these are products that I can keep selling for years to come.

Consider this: Do you want to do 2 to 4 major product launches each year? I know guys who do one per month. It’s crazy.

Or do you want to have maybe 1 or 2 products that you can continually sell for years that happen to bring you residual income, too?

Residual income might well be considered the 8th wonder of the business world. When you’re earning residual income, you have income security with LESS work than if you did a big fancy launch every 2 to 6 months.

Do you know what it takes to do a big launch? It’s exhausting. And when it’s over and the affiliates are paid and the bonuses are paid and all the expenses are handled, you realize that even though the launch went great (assuming it didn’t flop) you still didn’t make as much money as you thought you would.

Which is why you see marketers doing one big launch after another after another. It’s work and frankly it’s not fun.

If you wonder why so many ‘big name’ marketers come and go after a few years, this is the reason.

Be kind to yourself and work smart. Sell products with residual income.

Of course, to be able to sell anything you need to be skilled at copywriting and there are good and bad ways to do this. To learn about some of the common pitfalls to avoid when copywriting, check out the featured resource below to gat a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂

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