Online Marketing Business

Is Your Sales Funnel Bleeding Money?

If you know anything about sales and marketing, you know the power of the sales funnel.

This Is nothing new; sales funnels have been around in some shape or form forever. Online marketing makes them quick and simple to implement with the correct tools, such as Convertri or ClickFunnels and they can make a real difference to your profits, but can you be doing more, and is your sales funnel bleeding money and not working as well as you would like?

Let’s be honest. Does this sound a bit like you and your business?

You work hard to build your sales funnel. You’re buying traffic, but your funnel isn’t converting well enough to fully pay for that traffic.

Which means, you’re in the red. Yes, you are building your list, and yes, over time you will recoup your money from your list by promoting other products.

But wouldn’t it be great if you could get your funnel in the black NOW, so that you can buy all the traffic you want and build your list as fast as you want?

Having a self-liquidating offer, or an offer that breaks even on the front end can make a huge impact on your business because this means that you can afford to pay more for traffic, which means more eyes on your offer and more profit, but only if your offer converts well.

Anther way to boost your funnel is to take in a “lodger” of some kind. Not sure what I mean? Look at it this way…

Think of a big house – one that you love, but it costs too much on your income. What do you do? You take in a renter or two. They are paying you to stay in your house, and you now have no trouble making the mortgage payment each month.

Surprisingly, you can do the same thing with your sales funnel.

Take a good look at your funnel for places where you can accommodate “renters.” For example, if your backend offer isn’t converting as well as it should, how about renting out that back end offer to another marketer?

If that marketer has an offer that converts really well, and it’s a good match for your funnel, then this makes total sense for the both of you.

Now here’s a little trick: Let’s say you run your traffic through three different offers after they sign up to your list. All of these offers are on a related topic, in line with the subject of the lead magnet that got them into the funnel in the first place.

But if they turn down all three offers, then renting the exit splash page to another marketer with a product that is DIFFERENT for your offers could work really well.

Obviously, this offer would still be marketing-related, but it could be ANYTHING else that is marketing related. Of course, you’ll have to test this out. Do a one-week trial run with your “renter” and see if it’s a good fit. If not, find someone else.

You can rent out any space you like, whether it’s the first upsell, the exit page, a link on your download page and so forth.

How much should you charge? Enough to put your funnel into profit, or a little bit better. If your renter makes a killing, that’s fine. The point is to get you into profit. Then you can buy all the traffic you like and build that list quickly.

Your real profit comes from the list, not the funnel. Always think about the backend and your email marketing because this is where a really profitable business is built.

Selling this offer to established marketers isn’t difficult, either. Simply send them an email letting them know what you have. It’s an offer they don’t see every day – at least not yet – and it will spark immediate interest with some marketers.

Like anything else, it is a numbers game. Plan on approaching or emailing about 5-7 marketers to get 2 who are really interested, typically one of which will say yes.

I know of one fellow who’s been doing this for a couple of years now. He built a funnel in a new niche; one he was dying to enter. But for whatever reason, he had a devil of a time getting the funnel to pay for itself.

Finally, in frustration, he sent out a blanket email to 14 marketers that he personally knew. Granted, he already had the contacts, so this part was easy for him.

10 of those marketers expressed interest, and he wound up building a second, similar funnel to accommodate the demand.

He has two upsells after his squeeze page. The first is for one of his own products, and the second is rented out to another marketer. Then on the download page he rents out three different spaces to three different marketers.

Finally, he sends a ONE TIME ONLY offer to his new subscribers via email. He makes it VERY clear that this is the only time he will ever send such an offer on behalf of another marketer, but this offer is so good, he just had to let his new readers know about it. (You know the lingo to use.)

Because he makes it clear that this is a one-time only thing and he won’t be spamming his list, no one gets upset.

And between his own upsell, the upsell he rents out, the three ads on the download page and the ‘solo ad,’ he makes a good chunk of money.

He’s now able to buy more expensive traffic and still be in the black at all times. And this better traffic is more targeted and results in more sales from his list.

Talk about a win-win-win situation. He took something bad – a funnel that frustratingly was not paying for itself – and turned it into a way to build his lists even faster and with better prospects, while still making a small profit on his funnels.

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 🙂

Affiliate Marketing 101: Know Your Audience

One of the secrets to successful affiliate marketing is knowing your audience so well that you can instinctively predict what products they’ll like and what they’ll avoid. To get to this stage, will require some effort and research on your part.

In fact, it’s crucial that you do it before you even start marketing to your niche. One reason so many affiliates struggle to convert readers into buyers is because they don’t know their audience.

Follow the pointers below and you will be better prepared.

Do You Have A Customer Avatar?

When targeting a niche, whom will you be speaking to? If you’re targeting the women’s weight loss niche, how old will your reader be? Is she a mother or single? How much time do you think she’ll have a day to exercise? Is she a career woman or a stay-at-home mom?

There are so many questions that you need to ask yourself so that you have a clear picture of whom you’re targeting. If you’re writing for a woman who is in her fifties, she may be a career woman or a housewife. In most cases, she’ll not be trying to lose weight after a pregnancy.

Generally, she’ll be trying to lose weight with gentler exercise programs like Pilates or Yoga. So, you can leave out hardcore interval training programs and focus more on promoting yoga DVDs, yoga mats, etc.

While some questions will overlap and you don’t need to get too specific, you must have a general idea of whom you’re speaking to. This will enable you to tailor your message accordingly.

Where Do They Hang Out?

Finding your target audience will be your next task.

Just by scanning the forums they hang out in, you’ll be able to learn a lot about the niche and where there are gaps that are not being filled by the market.

You can then target these areas with your marketing.

Over and above that, knowing where your audience hangs out will be helpful when it comes to traffic generation later on.

What Are Their Problems?

The forums, Facebook groups and other places where your audience congregates will often have questions and problems being mentioned by those in need of help. This is a goldmine of information.

Find out what common problems your market has and address them effectively. You’ll get a lot more sales and a very loyal audience.

Very often, during your research you’ll see similar products being mentioned that have helped people with their issues, and some other products will not be looked upon favorably.

Take notes here and promote the popular products and avoid the stinkers.

Are There Any Other Issues That They May Have?

Some niches can be related without you even realizing it. For example, the man who wishes to lose weight and get ripped, may also be doing it to attract more women. He’ll probably also be interested in guides that show him how to pick up women, etc.

This is actually a very popular industry online with tons of sales. You may wish to experiment and try promoting a pickup artist guide and see how that works for you. If it’s well-received, you know that you can start planning to market it more frequently. If it falls flat, you can ditch it and move on.

By following the tips above, you’ll become a better affiliate marketer and your content will be devoured by your readers. You’ll be the Pied Piper in your niche and your loyal readers will follow you wherever you lead them. Once you get to this stage, you’ll be an excellent affiliate marketer.

But it doesn’t end there! In affiliate marketing there are many skills you need to master to be effective and once you have found and know your audience, you will need to try to sell them on your affiliate offers but you need to be careful and not turn them away and this is where subtlety comes in…

How to Be Subtle In Affiliate Marketing

There’s a marketing saying that goes, “People hate being sold to, but they love to buy.”

This maxim pretty much hits the nail on the head. Many marketers fail to realize that you say more when you say less. When a blog post hypes up a product or you send an email that praises a product in a way that’s over the top, you actually repel potential buyers.

It’s obvious that you have a vested interest in getting them to buy the product just so that you earn an affiliate commission. One the reader detects that you have an ulterior motive, they’ll feel that you’re biased towards the product because you’re affiliated with it.

Your motives become suspect and you lose credibility and trust. Once those go, getting the sale can be very difficult. That’s exactly why you must be subtle in your marketing.

One of the best ways to do that will be to show how the product helped you and how you benefitted from it. While it may not be possible to do this for all the products you’re promoting, you can still be subtle in other ways.

For example, if you have a site showing how to build chicken coops, casually mentioning that ‘circular saws are much better than miter saws because they’re easy to use’ will get you more sales. You just need to hyperlink the words circular saws to the product you’re promoting.

Curious visitors will click on the link. After all, everyone wants to make things faster and easier for themselves.

However, if you say, ‘you need to buy a circular saw model XXX to do this job effectively. It is the best saw that we found for the job and only costs $YYY’, you’ve probably set off the reader’s Spidey senses. They can sense that you’re pushing the saw on to them because you were too obvious.

The goal is to use curiosity and strategically placed anchor text to get the clicks. They must feel like it was their choice. That is the key. When the reader is doing things on his or her own volition, they’ll not be in a guarded state and will be much more receptive to the sales copy, etc.

As an affiliate, your job is to get the click. The sales page should do the selling. While your content can gently pre-sell the reader, it should mostly be ‘benefits oriented’. You want to sell the solution to the problem and not the product. The best way to do this is by showing how the product solves the most common problems that your audience faces.

You’ll not even need to mention where the product is sold or the positive reviews it has. If your content convinces the reader that the product is the solution that they’ve been looking for – without blatantly telling them, the reader WILL click on the links to see how they can solve their problems.

Everybody is looking for solutions. You’re just the middleman who gently guides them down the right path. That’s all there is to it. Be subtle.

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Is Convertri A Good Choice For New Marketers?

Selling products online can seem like a formidable challenge, and it often seems like creating the product is the easiest task. It’s the sales pages, funnels, linking them all together and making sure everything functions smoothly that’s the most intimidating and difficult part of the process.

So many new marketers get stuck on the technical aspects of online marketing, but it is now easier than ever to get up and running, even with limited technical skills.

And the good news is that it doesn’t have to be a painstaking grind. There are a plethora of page builders and funnel builders on the market to help you out.

Anyone who has been trying online marketing for more than two seconds would have heard of brands like ClickFunnels, OptimizePress, Leadpages and so on.

You’re spoiled for choice and this too becomes a challenge. You’re spoiled for choice. Which do you choose?

Some are plugins that you install, while others have pages which are hosted for you. Some are one-time payments while others are recurring. There’s a ton of decisions to consider before making your choice.

In this article, you’ll discover why Convertri is probably the best option for beginners who are new to online marketing and wish to profit from product creation.

Unlike many of the bigger brands such as ClickFunnels, Convertri has been flying under the radar for a number of years now and is used by many experienced marketers. It’s gaining popularity and will soon rival the rest of the big guys.

Now let’s see why Convertri is ideal for beginners…

Intuitive And Flexible

One of the strongest points of Convertri is that it’s easy to use. The interface is almost intuitive. Most beginners hate going through the learning curve. Since Convertri uses a ‘drag and drop’ editor, it’s perfect for beginners.

Seniors who are trying to make money online will find it very easy to use. Unlike HTML, there is no complicated code to deal with and pages can be replicated easily with the cloning feature in the software.

While OptimizePress and ClickFunnels are block-based editors, with Convertri, you can drag and drop your elements anywhere on the page and make your page look exactly the way you want it to.

Convertri was the first real fully freeform page builder, and while there are some others now available, Convertri is streets ahead in way of functionality and ease of use.

No fiddling with CSS code or any such hassle. There’s even an editor to get your mobile responsive version to look perfect. The mobile version does not affect how your page looks like on a computer. They’re separate from each other and that gives you maximum flexibility and creative license.

Plus, the level of support is incredible; you normally only find out how good a company is when things go wrong, and you have to contact support and there Convertri has you really well covered. And they also have an active Facebook group where you can get peer support and ideas too.

Speed And Convenience

Since Convertri hosts the sales pages, download pages, etc. for you, there’s really no need for you to build your own website yet. Just create a few products, put them out into the marketplace and make sales.

Once you’re rolling in the green, you’ll be motivated to have your own site, etc. Let’s get you making some cash first before doing the more mundane tasks.

Money loves speed, and speed comes from convenient processes – and that’s exactly what Convertri is all about. Speed and convenience which makes marketers’ lives much easier.

Improves Conversions

Tests have shown that pages built on Convertri load faster than pages built on other more popular platforms. People have the attention span of a housefly these days.

You want your pages to load as fast as possible so that you can hook their eyeballs, grab their attention quickly and get the sale. Slow pages WILL cost you sales. Period.

Most novice marketers neither have the technical know-how to fiddle around with caching plugins and coding nor the time to spend two months trying to speed up their load times by half a microsecond.

Using Convertri makes things a breeze while the pages are blazing fast. It doesn’t get better than that.

Simple Split Testing

‘Split testing’ is another term that strikes fear into the hearts of most newbies and even intermediate marketers.

Convertri makes it all much easier and even provides you the conversion stats so that you know which pages are working better with just one glance.

This may not be a sexy thing, but it is important to know how well your pages are performing.

This is especially important if you are thinking of spending money on any sort of advertising to get traffic to your sales pages. If they aren’t converting well, you are wasting money. And if you have a page that is seriously outperforming the rest, then it makes sense to direct more traffic to that one to maximize your conversions.

Amazing Features

The page importer feature in Convertri will allow you to replicate any page on the internet. See a page you like? Go ahead and import it. Now all you need to do is make the necessary modifications to make the page unique and attractive.

(Do note that you should get permission from the site owner if you’re replicating a page that’s not yours… OR… you may model it but make enough changes so that the content on your page is completely different from the page you imported. Don’t plagiarize or rip off someone else’s hard work.)

Another feature that marketers seem to love about Convertri is the ‘undo button’. Apparently, ClickFunnels does not have that feature and it’s something that is sorely needed… and beginner marketers who constantly need to make changes and improve will find that the Convertri undo button becomes their new best friend.

Affordable

Last but not least, Convertri is much more affordable than ClickFunnels. Currently, at half the price, it’s a much better deal and provides most of the same features that you’ll need to create high-converting sales pages, etc.

While plugins like OptimizePress are one-time payments, they tend to be clunkier and the pages load slower. They also have a yearly support fee that you’ll need to fork out money for if you need support.

Leadpages costs slightly less, but the pages don’t load quite as fast as Convertri. The editor is also not as easy to use as Convertri’s drag and drop page builder and is very limited compared to the other options available to you.

To conclude, Convertri is one of the best investments a beginner marketer could make in their business. It will increase your sales, make your marketing processes much easier and if you ever have problems, they have excellent support too.

It may not be the cheapest option but is the best and if used well, it will become an investment rather than an expense and will more than pay for itself.

Do check it out and leverage this powerful platform to launch your own successful online business.

>>> See Convertri In Action Here <<<

Of course, creating a great page is only part of the puzzle. If you want to have great results you need to be able to write highly converting copy which is difficult for many people as there are so many mistakes that can have a dramatic effect on conversions.

To help you avoid these mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be forewarned. Download, read it and take action 😊

Expand Your Online Business With A Complementary Business Model

If you are like most entrepreneurs, one business simply isn’t enough! Many entrepreneurial business owners have so many ideas that they want to start a dozen businesses all at once; unfortunately, if they do the likelihood result is one of failure.

The savvy entrepreneur will start with a single idea and build a business around that before even thinking about expanding or creating another business. This is just common sense!

If you’ve already grown a successful business and have now made the decision to expand your business into another branch, rather than simply expanding the current branch that you’re in, then you want to choose something that you would be able to leverage off each other.

Going in two completely different directions may be personally satisfying for you, but to maximize your success, it’s best if you choose something that fits seamlessly with your current business branch and it will make things much easier to manage.

There are many different ways you can do this.

For example, let’s say you have a thriving digital affiliate marketing business. You’re making money recommending courses that are delivered in the form of videos or text downloads.

This could be in any niche, not just online marketing. For example, you might be recommending fitness courses for your audience. A great way to expand your business would be to begin offering promotions for tangible items as well—such as dumbbells, yoga mats and so on.

This is a similar business branch, because it’s still affiliate marketing, but it’s just slightly different. You can go one step further and create an entirely different business branch that also pairs well with affiliate marketing.

One good way to do this would be to begin creating your own information products. As a product creator, you would develop your own courses and present them to your customers so that you could keep 100% of the revenue.

You’ll also be able to expand your profits by recruiting people who are in the affiliate marketing business to promote your info products.

Another example might be someone who is currently publishing fiction on Kindle.

As a self-publisher, you’re aware of the ins and outs of all of the technical tasks as well as the strategic ones that allow an author to publish their work on Amazon or a variety of platforms and make money from it.

So how can you expand on this business model in a new direction?

One way is to begin developing your own info product courses that teach other would-be authors how to do what you’re doing. This is essentially a non-fiction creation. However, instead of only making a few dollars or cents publishing a book about it on Amazon, you would be able to charge much more selling a digital course on your own website.

What about someone who started their online business as an info product creator? Maybe your first endeavor online was to create a course teaching people how to set up a blog.

One thing you can do is expand your business into becoming a service provider, where are you are charging people to handle the task for them. You could make money installing their blog and setting it all up for them.

As someone who is familiar with creating your own info products, you may also want to offer services creating info products for other online marketers. These would be people who don’t know how to brainstorm, research, and write or record their own lessons, but they would like a product of their own to sell.

If you started out as a service provider, you can also pair that business model with something your clients might like. For example, let’s say you started off as a ghostwriter. Your clients may be people who don’t have the time or knowledge on how to set up their own blog with the content you’ve created for them.

That could be an info product that you create and sell to those same clients. You may also want to spend some time creating content that you put on a private label rights store.

While your current ghostwriting clients may be able to afford your services for exclusive content to some degree, they may love to have the opportunity to buy your PLR in bulk to beef up their site, emails, and other needs.

Anytime you’re doing something online and succeeding with it, there is an opportunity for you to sell the information about how you’re doing it. So whether you’re currently an info product creator or not, think of everything you know that a newbie may not.

Use this as an opportunity to develop courses that could help others learn the ropes. Look at your current business model and see if there are affiliate marketing opportunities in your niche.

If you’re creating products or providing services, you may be able to add a business branch where you’re simply promoting others who do the same – your competitors! Of course, you don’t have to start a new branch that pairs well with your existing one.

There’s always the possibility that you would like a complete break from what you currently do so that you have something exciting and new to pursue online. You might be able to do this with a new niche, or a completely different business model that has nothing to do with what you’re currently in.

The only reason you may want to consider pairing things together is because it makes it much easier to use the momentum of your existing successful business branch to get the other one off the ground. For example, as a service provider selling ghostwriting services, it would be very easy for you to get those same clients to purchase your PLR.

By the way, if you want to learn about 5 lucrative 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 covers 5 online business models that you can choose from. Pick one and get started today… 😊

Which Online Business Model Should I Choose?

This sounds like a simple question to ask yourself before venturing into any type of business endeavour and online business is no different.

It is true that online businesses are less risky as they don’t require a lot of capital to get started, but you still need to see which ones are viable and a good fit for your personal circumstances and likes.

So, before you leap into a new business venture, you want to make sure that this will be sustainable for you in the beginning and for the long run. You don’t want to get started with something, only to discover there is a missing piece of the puzzle that will prevent you from achieving success with your efforts.

Analyze

You first need to analyze each business model to see if it’s viable in several different ways. The first thing most internet marketers will want to know is whether or not a particular business model will be lucrative for them.

If it’s not a profitable venture, then you’ll want to focus your efforts elsewhere. For many, it’s not just about the amount of money that they can make, but also the speed in which they can make it.

If you’re only making a few pennies every month, that won’t be enough to sustain your efforts. You have to think in terms of exchanging your time for money. Take a look at what other marketers are earning with that business model.

If you’re adding this branch to another business, then you don’t want to take away your time and effort on a very lucrative business model only to funnel it into one that won’t earn you as much money.

This may or may not be important to you. If you’re adding a second business model on specifically for personal satisfaction reasons, then the financial slant of it may not be as important to you.

But this is rarely the case, because people like to see a return on their efforts. Don’t forget, when you’re determining the profitability of a business model, you’re not just looking at what comes into your bank account.

Upfront Cost

You’re also looking at the expenses you were required to pay ahead of time to get that business model off the ground and operating functionally.

Also, make sure you take a look at any alternate approaches to implementing this particular business model.

For example, let’s say you decided to go into affiliate marketing. If you promoted information products that either had recurring income or a higher ticket cost, you would earn more than someone who was simply recommending books on Amazon, where you would only earn a few cents for every sale.

Implementation

The next thing you want to do when determining whether or not a business model is viable for you at this time is to think about how easy it will be for you to implement. No one wants to engage in a frustrating activity, but if something is difficult, it can severely impact the amount of time, money, and effort that you have to put forth in making it work.

When you first start thinking about adding a second business model, make a list of all of the skills it requires to implement this particular plan. You might find that you have a number of the skills readily available to you.

However, you may also discover that you are incapable of handling one or more of the tasks. If this happens, you will need to look at one of two options.

Your first is to simply delegate the task to someone who does have the knowledge and skill to handle it. This will undoubtedly add to the financial burden that will be required to get this business off the ground.

Another way you can approach it is to simply adopt the realization that you will need to learn the skill in order to implement the business plan.

Some skills are easy to learn and cost-effective for your budget. Others take more time and discipline to understand, and may come at a high cost due to the learning process. Think about all of the tools that you will need in order to pursue a specific business plan.

Sometimes, marketers will teach a method and say no special tools are required. But without them, it makes the process much harder to achieve. You’ll have to decide whether or not you’re capable of handling it without special tools to help you along.

Enjoyment

The final way you want to analyze this business model to see if it’s viable for you is to think about how much you will enjoy working in this business branch over time. There are many people who start out pursuing a particular business branch simply because it looks profitable and easy.

Then they get started with it and discover that it doesn’t bring them a great deal of personal satisfaction. They begin to dread having to work on this business branch, and then it withers and dies.

One of the biggest perks in working for yourself online and at home is that you get to choose what you work on. Instead of being forced to handle projects that bring you grief, you’re able to selectively decide which projects, niches, and path you want to take in your business.

The last thing you want to do is abandon that freedom of choice only to suffer because you added a business branch you thought you would enjoy, but don’t. Before you commit to this particular new business branch, think about what it would be like to engage in this topic or concept every single day.

In fact, you might give yourself a test to do something in the niche for an hour or two each day for a few weeks. This trial run will enable you to gather enough information to see if this is a business branch that will keep you enthusiastic over time, or cause you to quickly avoid and abandon it and waste all of the time, effort, and money that you have put into it.

So, there you have it. A quick insight into how you can pick the best online business model(s) to suit you.