Author Archive | AJ Steve

We’re taught from early on that success is everything. Win the game or ace the test and you get the grown-up’s approval. Then we get older and succeeding becomes even more important. You got into a hot shot college? Congrats! You won the contract? Great! You built a multi-million dollar business? Super!

But here’s what nobody tells you – before you can win you’ve almost always got to lose, and lose big, and lose often. You’ve heard the expression, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” right? Well, when you venture you don’t always gain. Many times you lose, and you lose big.

And when that happens, your confidence takes a nosedive. The next time out you hedge your bets, you pull your punches and you don’t try as hard. Why? Because that way if you fail again, you can tell yourself that you didn’t lose as big. It’s funny, but it’s also human nature.

People fail a time or two and then what do they do? Sadly, many quit. They just give up. Failure hurts too much. It’s humiliating and embarrassing and they’d rather play it “safe.” Which actually means they don’t want to play at all, they just want to sit in their cozy cotton lined box and never venture outside into the cruel world again.

Here’s what those people don’t know: The ONLY way to truly, absolutely, permanently fail is to quit. Everything else is simply a step on the way to success.

Did you know…

– The average millionaire goes bankrupt 3.5 times.

– There is a new millionaire created every 58 hours.

– The average millionaire doesn’t realize their dream until age 45 and becomes a millionaire at 54.

– The average millionaire dabbles in 17 different businesses, concepts, schemes and enterprises but doesn’t hit it big until the 18th try.

Entrepreneurship is the quickest way to become a millionaire. 74% of all millionaires in America became millionaires through entrepreneurship.

The average millionaire goes bankrupt and what does s/he do? Dusts themselves off and tries again. And again. And again. Failure is a temporary detour, not a roadblock. I absolutely promise you, if you’re still breathing then you can still succeed and succeed BIG, regardless of how many times you’ve failed in the past.

Remember those Chicken Soup for the Soul guys, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen? Their manuscript got rejected 140 times by 140 different publishers. Most people would have quit after the 10th or 20th rejection, but they just kept sending out that manuscript until the 141st publisher took a chance. Result? Both of them are millionaires many times over.

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade and he was defeated in every public office role he ran for. Then he became the British Prime Minister at the age of 62 and led his country to victory in WWII.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

R. H. Macy had a long and undistinguished history of failing businesses, including the first Macy’s in NYC. No one would have bet on him, but he went on to create the biggest department store in the world.

Marilyn Monroe’s first contract with Columbia Pictures expired because they decided she wasn’t pretty or talented enough to be an actress. But Monroe kept plugging away, and even today’s audiences know and love her decades after her untimely death.

Toyota passed over Soichiro Honda for an engineering job. He could have quit on his dreams. Instead, he went on to make motorcycles and cars and became a billionaire in the process.

Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Imagine how that could impact a child, hearing from the ‘experts’ that you’re too stupid to learn. Most kids would stop trying. Not Edison.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. – Thomas Edison

Vera Wang failed to make the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team. Then she got passed over for the editor-in-chief position at Vogue. Time to realize she was a failure, right? Wrong. At age 40 she began designing wedding gowns and today she’s one of the hottest designers in the business and a self-made billionaire.

You’ve probably heard that Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” But did you know that he had several failed businesses before the premiere of Snow White?

The difference in winning and losing is most often…not quitting. – Walt Disney

Albert Einstein’s teachers labeled him “slow” and “mentally handicapped.” What if Einstein had actually believed the people who made these proclamations? For one thing he never would have won the Nobel prize in physics.

Henry Ford’s first auto company went out of business. He abandoned a second because of a fight and lost a third to declining sales. Yet he went on to become one of the greatest American entrepreneurs ever.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right. – Henry Ford

J. K. Rowling was unemployed and living on social security while writing her first Harry Potter novel. It was rejected by 12 different publishers and finally picked up with a paltry advance of just 1,500 pounds, but now she became the first person to become a billionaire through writing.

For every failure to success example I’ve given here, there are literally hundreds of thousands of others out there. And the only thing stopping you from becoming the next failure to success story is you. So what are you waiting for?

Hurry up and get your failures out of the way so you can go on to create big success for yourself too. And maybe someday your story will be featured right along with Einstein’s, Ford’s, Disney’s and all the other great people who refused to let a little thing like failure get in their way.

You’ve either got a blog already, or you’re just about to start one. Congratulations! You are one of only 500 million. Now then, knowing that your blog is (statistically speaking) less than a needle in a haystack, how are you going to get it NOTICED and read?

In one word, the answer is BRANDING. You can either throw together a blog and hope it somehow gets found, or you can carefully craft a brand that captures readers’ attention and keeps them coming back for more.

To throw one together, just do what 99.9% of other bloggers do – wing it. Fly by the seat of your pants and hope for the best. In six months (or sooner) you’ll likely be so discouraged you’ll give up.

Building a brand is obviously the way to go. Think Google, Coke, Apple and Nike to understand the huge potential branding holds for your blog. Brands stand for something, mean something and create loyalty in their customers. They stand apart and often far, far above the competition. And best of all, really good brands get remembered and are sought out by consumers.

Here then are 10 tips for building your blogging brand:

Who are you writing to? Exactly who is your blog meant for? Create a clear picture of your ideal reader, including age, profession, family, worries, problems, hobbies, etc. You’ll be writing to this one person rather than trying to talk to everyone. Remember, when you target everyone, you interest no one. But when a certain segment of the population believes you’re writing just for them, you’ll build a loyal following.

Why are you writing to your specific readers? What is your goal? It might be to educate, to persuade, to motivate, etc. Keep your goal in mind at all times.

What are you writing about? This is your topic. It might be physical fitness, marketing, dating, etc. Decide in advance what your message is going to be.

Choose a brandable name. If you’re creating a fitness blog, for example, then you might choose a one or two word brand name that people are likely to remember, rather than a keyword laden name.

HowToGetHealthyAndLoseWeight.com isn’t really brandable – it’s too generic and too keyword rich. Think in terms of “Google” – now that’s a brand. You might try things like FitMonkey.com or SkinnyCakes.com – those are brandable and memorable.

Create a snappy tagline. A name generally isn’t enough – you also want a tagline to help brand yourself, to clarify what you do and to make your blog more memorable. If your blog is on bacon recipes, your url might be DeadPiggy.com and your tagline might be “Bacon lover’s recipes for the non-chef.” See how the tagline not only defines that the site is about bacon recipes, but also narrows the niche to those who don’t consider themselves to be good cooks? This is a prime example of using a tagline to define what you do and WHO you do it for.

Get a logo. Can you picture the Apple logo? Nike? Coke? A logo is an integral part of your brand. Make it clean, simple, eye-catching and unique. It’s worth the extra money to get your logo just right.

Adapt your logo into a favicon. Again, this is an important part of branding your blog.

Use a website design that matches your topic. A header full of balloons and clowns on a website about grieving generally isn’t going to work. Dull colors on a children’s website or a lack of photos of gardens on a gardening website won’t work. Make sure all of the visual elements of your site correspond with your topic.

Choose a writing style and stick with it. Take a lesson from McDonald’s here and give your readers what they’ve come to expect from you. Maybe you’re writing to a technical crowd – then you might write like an engineer. Or perhaps you’re taking on a persona, like the Rich Jerk. Odds are you’re going to write like yourself, which is perhaps best of all because you won’t have any trouble maintaining that style. Consistency is key because if one day you’re writing like the guy next door and the next day you’re writing like an English professor, your readers are going to get confused and likely won’t return.

Promote your blog’s name through social media. Consistently use your blog’s name everywhere. Don’t use “Law Enforcement Weight Loss” on Twitter and “Muscle Cops” on Facebook – no one will realize it’s the same blog you’re referring to. Again, this is another reason to choose a unique, short, brandable name that no one else is using anywhere.

If your blog is going to stand apart from the crowd, then you’ve got to do a little extra work, but that work will likely pay off handsomely in the end.

Not only will you stand apart from the crowd, you’ll also discover that if you ever decide to sell your blog, you’ll be able to charge a great deal more because you took the time to brand it.

It’s fine to build your business gradually, a step here and a step there. But it’s so much better, faster and just plain more FUN to build it by leaps and bounds.

Below you’ll find the magic words that will help you to do just that. Forget taking the long, slow painful route and resolve to achieve a quantum leap, or true metamorphosis in your business.

1 Magic Word That Quadruples Productivity And Profits

There are a myriad of tasks any one online marketer needs to perform, and the faster and better those tasks are completed, the more profitable the business can be. But struggling marketers who are trying to balance administrative duties, product creation, social media, customer service, formatting and uploading books to Kindle, writing blog posts, setting up JV’s, recruiting affiliates, writing emails, setting up autoresponders, doing research, writing sales copy, answering emails, forum posting and all their many other marketing tasks might be better off doing less, not more.

If you’ve ever been on a ship, you probably noticed the captain doesn’t cook the meals or swab the deck. Nor does he maintain the engines, hoist the sails, plot the navigation or the other 101 duties that are done aboard a ship. Rather, he is the pilot of the entire operation, instructing everyone else on what to do.

Perhaps it’s time you think of yourself as the pilot of your own business. Do those tasks which you are extremely good at, and OUTSOURCE the rest to professionals who excel in those areas. You will not only get far more done, but odds are the work will be completed faster in a more professional manner. And when you can quadruple your efforts by adding a few part time outsourcers, you can also quadruple your results and your profits.

Don’t kid yourself – you cannot do it all and make the kind of money you want. As soon as you can afford to, start outsourcing. It’s not only one of the most profitable things you can do, it also gets you away from the grindstone and able to see the big picture so you can better navigate the waters of your business.

2 Magic Words To Make You A Marketing Rockstar

If you want your content to be seen and shared, and if you want it to make a lasting impression on prospects, then the written word is seldom enough anymore. Let’s do a test: Tell me everything you can about the person who wrote the blog post you read yesterday. Drawing a blank? Now tell me everything you can about a video you saw yesterday. Different story, right?

What if someone calls you on the phone to sell you something you’re interested in, versus someone that shows up at your door. Which one are you more likely to buy from? Assuming you’re not freaked out that a salesman appeared out of nowhere with the product that adequately fits your needs, you’re going to buy from him, not the faceless person on the phone.

Obviously you can’t visit your prospects in person, but you can do something almost as good – USE VIDEO. People remember video over the written word because it engages more of the senses. If you only use the written word, you’re simply not going to make nearly the same level of connection that you could have with video.

Now then, you might be afraid to get in front of the camera. If so, you can start out with slideshow videos, animated videos or screencast videos. Then move up to videos of yourself because this is the real pay off. This is where people start to feel like they can really connect with you and they KNOW you. Remember, content is more important than quality. You don’t have to be the next Steven Spielberg to make this work, you just have to be authentic with something to say that people want to hear.

3 Magic Words That Can DOUBLE Your Sales

You should be doing this every single time you sell a product or service because it will invariably increase your bottom line. Marketers have added hundreds of thousands of dollars to their sales funnels by simply incorporating these three words into every sales system they create.

What are the 3 magic words? ALWAYS BE UPSELLING. Every single time you sell anything, offer an upsell / downsell sequence because it can turn your original $47 sale into a $300 sale or more, simply by offering the customer additional options.

Offer something that is complementary to the original offer. It might make the original offer easier or faster to implement, go into more depth, offer more options, or even perform a service for them. It could be coaching, an additional information product, software, a membership program or anything else that helps the customer to achieve the result they want.

What if you don’t have a product or service to offer as an upsell? Then find an appropriate affiliate product that matches your original offer. And here’s a secret: When a customer turns down an upsell, they are typically more open to buying a lower cost (downsell) product. It’s almost as though the higher ticket item warms them up to the downsell offer. This is why car dealers and real estate brokers like to show cars and properties that are too expensive for the client. Once they show the client something more affordable, the client is more likely to make an offer than if they’d been shown the lower cost model in the first place.

4 Magic Words To Get You More Clients

If you’re selling big ticket items or services, I’m about to utter the 4 words 9 out of 10 marketers dread: PICK UP THE PHONE. Nothing sells as well as face to face contact except perhaps the phone. Let’s face it – your prospects are inundated with emails and shout-outs on social media. If you really want to connect and make the sale, you need to pick up that 500 pound phone and establish a real one-on-one relationship.

If you’re phone-a-phobic, start with existing customers. Find out how they’re doing with the product(s) they’ve purchased and what you can do to help them along (coaching, perhaps?) Next, move on to your lowest hanging fruit – those prospects you deem most likely to bite. Make it a rule to call 5 people each day, and within 3 weeks you’ll notice 2 things: First, being on the phone isn’t so scary anymore. And second, business is definitely picking up.

5 Magic Words That Virtually Eliminate Any Competition

Whatever your niche, there are others who are doing very nearly the same thing, better known as your direct competition. For example, if you’re a weight loss coach, there are thousands of other weight loss coaches you’re competing against to gain clients.

That’s why you’ve got to find a way to stand completely apart from the crowd, and the best way to do this is to CREATE A UNIQUE POSITIONING POINT for yourself and your business. Find that one thing that makes you totally different from all the other weight loss coaches out there, that thing that draws customers to you like flies. And mind you, saying that you’re better, that your work is higher quality, that you’ve got more experience, etc., isn’t unique. Everybody says those things.

Can’t think of anything? Try this: “I will show you how to lose weight while NEVER feeling deprived and still eating the foods you love.”

Sign me up!

Here’s one from a carpet cleaner: “If I don’t remove your stain and get you sparkling clean carpets, I’ll pay you $50 for your time.”

You’re hired!

I wouldn’t need to hear another word in order to choose this carpet cleaner over all the others – would you?

A Chiropractor might advertise: “I’ll get you immediate relief from your back pain or your visit is completely free.”

That’s what I want to hear – make me an appointment now!

6 Magic Words That Double Subscribers

You already know how crucial it is to continually build your list. But are you being aggressive enough? The vast majority of websites are missing opportunities to grab more subscribers because they don’t PLACE OPT-IN BOXES ON EVERY PAGE of their website. Yet this simple step can as much as DOUBLE the number of subscribers you get from your site.

Most websites have an opt-in box on the homepage or none at all. But very few have an opt-in box on every single page. And fewer still place opt-in boxes on both the right sidebar above the fold, and again at the bottom of each post. But adding these boxes along with a great incentive to sign up will increase the number of subscribers you get. And make sure your opt-in box stands out with clean lines and no clutter.

Go ahead and place opt-in boxes in unexpected places as well. Do you have sales pages? Place an opt-in box on each one. Do you have more than one sign-up incentive? You might place one incentive in the right sidebar, and the other at the bottom of the page. This way if one incentive doesn’t interest them, then the other one might. You can then position your follow ups according to the incentive they chose.

You might even place a video with your opt-in boxes, instructing the reader to fill in their email address and press the button to get the incentive. By telling people what to do, you increase the chances they’ll actually do it.

Can you make a short, snappy and powerful quiz people can take? This is another way to capture email addresses. Once they finish the quiz, you request their email address so you can send them their confidential results via email.

7 Magic Words To Build Your Visibility And Reach a Larger Audience

If you’re not doing Google Hangouts yet, you’re missing the boat. Google Hangouts will increase your visibility, help you boost traffic to your site, improve your search engine ranking, improve your authority, increase the distribution of your content, and connect you to your potential customers, affiliates and joint venture partners. Therefore, HOST REGULAR GOOGLE PLUS HANGOUTS ON AIR. Hangouts are multi-participant video chats. When you host a hangout, you can carry on a training or conversation.

Your Hangouts might be informal chats, scripted or anything in between. You can keep the Hangout private, or you can live stream and broadcast your Hangouts on Hangouts On Air. By publicly streaming your show, it’s automatically recorded and added to your YouTube account. You can also embed it on your website.

If you don’t want it to go live, you can make it private, download it when you’re finished and edit it before posting it.

This is a great way to reach a huge audience and strengthen your reputation. Make a plan on how and when you will use Hangouts on Air, and set up a regular schedule for broadcasting. Think about using Google Hangouts for teaching and lecturing, for coaching, consulting, interviews, webinars, product demonstration, hold question and answer sessions, etc. The possibilities are exciting and nearly endless.

8 Magic Words That Increase The Money In Your List 10 Fold

A list full of buyers is worth at least 10 times more than a list full of people who haven’t purchased anything from you yet. In fact, in most cases a buyers list is often worth closer to 100 times more than a list of prospects, and here’s why: When someone purchases anything from you, even if they only spend $1, they are now in a vastly different mindset concerning their relationship with you and your products. They now have an OWNERSHIP mindset because they own one of your products, and because of this they are far, far more likely to purchase from you again and again and at higher and higher price points.

So what are the 8 magic words that increase the money in your list 10 fold or more? TURN PROSPECTS INTO BUYERS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. In the beginning it doesn’t really matter if they are spending $1 or $100. The important thing is they have crossed that threshold from prospect to buyer.

How do you get prospects to immediately buy? The easiest way is to get them pre-sold by people they already know and trust. This means having affiliates refer people to you. If you cookie the affiliates in so that they receive commissions on anything prospects purchase for a long period of time, such as a year or even lifetime, affiliates will be more than happy to send you referrals.

Other ways to get people pre-sold on you before they even hit your site is to guest blog, to do joint ventures, and to create products that others in your niche can give away as a bonus to their own product. Whatever it takes, turn your prospects into happy customers as quickly as possible and you’ll be able to continue to sell to them for a long time to come.

I could have sent you a fruitcake this Holiday season to thank you for being a loyal subscriber and reader, but I think you’d appreciate something with more enduring value. So instead I’m giving you the gift that keeps giving – your own money generating system.

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As you (hopefully) have already discovered, making money online isn’t difficult, but it does take some knowledge and the ability to put that knowledge to work.

I’m going to outline a rather simple and straightforward system that I believe anyone can use to make income. It can be scaled up as large as you like, depending on how much time you want to put into it and what you want out of it. And it’s easy enough for even new marketers to do.

Mind you, this is not my invention, but rather a system that has been working for many marketers for years. It’s not a shiny new bauble – instead, it’s a proven method that brings home the paycheck week in and week out – if you put in the time and effort required.

Ready? Let’s get started.

1. Choose your niche. I’m going to make it easy for you here by recommending that you choose one of the following 3 niches: Money and finance, health and fitness, or relationships and dating. All three are evergreen and bring in a ton of money.

For purposes of this training, we’re going to focus on health, because I believe it’s truly the easiest of the 3 niches in which to make money. True, there’s plenty of competition, but that won’t really be a factor for what we’re doing. That’s because people who are desperate for a health related solution such as alleviating pain or losing weight are ready to make a purchase now.

Google “most common illnesses” and you’ll find acne, allergies, ADHD, arthritis, asthma, back pain, bad breath, bursitis, etc. And that’s just a few from the A’s and B’s. $320 billion is spent on prescription drugs in the U.S. alone each year, and that doesn’t include over the counter medications and remedies.

This is a HUGE market full of desperate buyers. So forget selling granny square patterns or children’s bedtime stories for now – focus on where the money is.

And if you want to focus on money or relationships, those are always hot, hungry markets as well.

2. Choose a product to sell. This is going to be your One Time Offer after they opt in to your squeeze page. Most people will tell you to create your free report, then create your squeeze page, and then find an OTO to offer after they opt in.

This is good advice. After all, they found your squeeze page, they filled out the form and they pressed the button – they are eager for a solution to their problem! Logically this is the time to offer it to them.

But I do things just a bit differently. I find the product I’m going to be promoting as my OTO first. Preferably I also find a second, similar product to use as my back up, in case the owner of the first product pulls it (yes, it happens.) The reason I find the product first is because I want to tailor my squeeze page and my free report to that EXACT topic.

For example, if my OTO is how to cure adult acne, I will write my report on ADULT acne, not teenage acne. But if I had done things the way most people do, I could have had a report on teenage acne and an OTO on adult acne. Sure it’s the same problem, but it’s two entirely different markets and my conversion rate on the OTO would have been terrible. That’s why you want to find the product you’re going to be promoting as your OTO first.

What product should you choose? Here are criteria to look for:

* Low price – something less than $15 is ideal because it becomes an impulse purchase. And that’s exactly what you need here, because you haven’t yet established a lot of credibility with your new list member.

* Excellent product – you’ve got to buy the product and make sure it really delivers on whatever it promises. This is no time to be selling junk. Actually, there is never a time to be selling junk.

* High conversion rate – okay, this is a no-brainer. You want a product that converts really well so that you’re making money.

The ADVANCED ALTERNATIVE to promoting an affiliate product is to create your own product. The drawback is you need to create it or hire someone else to do it for you, either of which takes time. The benefit is you keep 100% of your sales, rather than splitting them with a product owner.

The CHEAT METHOD to creating your own product is of course to use some high grade PLR.

If you are using your own product, here’s a trick I like to use: At the top of the sales page, let them know that their free report is on its way to their inbox. This builds consistency and credibility and shows them they’re at the right place.

3. Next you’re going to create something to give away to your new niche. Here’s the key – you’re not going to slap together any old report or re-purpose some PLR. Instead, you’re going to create something so awesome, people would PAY YOU to get it. Best of all, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel or come up with some brilliant insight to do this. Instead, you’re going to let others do the research for you.

Head over to Amazon and search for your niche in the book section. Write down titles that grab your attention. Search inside the books and look at the table of contents. Take notes.

Now do the same with magazines in your niche. Look at the headlines on the magazine covers – these can be a goldmine. You’ll need to change them to accommodate your exact niche (and not plagiarize) but that’s easy. You want to pay attention to what the hot topics are and what headlines are used to sell those topics.

Next, visit other websites to pick up more ideas and information. This entire research process should take you about an hour or two, depending on how much time you want to put into it.

Outline the information you’re going to present, and then either write your report or record it, your choice. Don’t want to write it yourself? Then outsource it. It only needs to be 10 to 20 pages of solid, useful information – don’t write a book.

As you go through this process, always keep in mind what you’ll be promoting for your OTO, so that your freebie is 100% consistent with that product. This will give you the highest conversions on your OTO.

4. Make your squeeze page. Hopefully you garnered 1-5 smoking hot headlines during your research. Use these on your squeeze page as the main headline and bullets, let them know they get the report for free for opting in, and that’s it. Don’t make this complicated – less is more. Create excitement and curiosity. Again, if you don’t want to make your own squeeze page, you can always outsource it.

A word to the wise: Once you begin using your squeeze page, test it. Test headlines, test colors, test the call to action – just TEST. The more you test, the better conversions your page will get, the more you will make. Doesn’t testing seem boring? Let me ask you this – does doubling your conversions and thus doubling what you earn seem boring? Don’t think about it, just do it.

IMPORTANT: If you’re using double opt in to build your list, customize the page they land on after confirming their subscription. At the top of that page, let them know their report is on its way. Then either direct them to your affiliate page if you’re promoting an affiliate product, or place your sales letter on this same page. This gives them a second opportunity to purchase your offer.

5. Get some professional articles written. These articles have got to be outstanding, so unless you’re a brilliant writer, I would suggest hiring this out to a professional.

Remember when you did your research in magazines and books? These are your very best clues as to what to write about and even how the title should read. Keep in mind: If you see something on the cover of a current magazine, that likely means it’s a hot topic now and will make an excellent topic for one of your articles.

Number of articles to write: At least 2, although 30+ is better. If you’re on a budget, start small and get more written later. The articles should be magazine quality. They should immediately capture attention and rivet the reader all the way to the end of the article.

Add your resource box to each article. This is your call to action where you promise the reader your shiny new report if they simply visit your totally awesome (squeeze) page.

An alternative to sending them to your squeeze page is to send them to your blog or website. Be sure to have a sign-up form on every single page of your site, offering your free report.

Variation: If you’re sending your new traffic straight to your blog or website, make it for “members only.” This means they have to opt in to get to your website and read the content. Yes, this is also a great way to list build. I recommend testing between the squeeze page, straight to the website with opt-in forms and making your website member’s only to see which one converts the best.

6. Find blogs in your niche. You’re looking for blogs that match your niche really well, that get lots of traffic (bare minimum – 10,000 hits a month) and that are open to guest written articles. If a blog doesn’t meet all 3 of these criteria, then take a pass.

[One note here: The higher traffic blogs might be harder to break in to, but they’re well worth the effort. If you are more comfortable starting out with blogs of 10,000 visitors a month and working your way up, do it. After all, those 10,000 hit blogs may well be getting 100,000 visitors or more soon, and if you’re already established there, so much the better.]

Also, visit each blog you’re considering and look at the bylines. Are all of the articles written by one author? Or does this blog accept submissions from others? While it’s not impossible to get your article on a blog that is generally only written by one person, it’s far easier to get it published on a blog that regularly uses guest authors.

7. Rubber meets the road. Remember the articles you had written? You’re going to contact these blog owners and give them your articles. Give each blog owner 2-3 articles, and only give each article away once so that each blog owner gets completely unique material from you.

Why give each blog owner 2-3 articles instead of just 1? Because you’re proving that you can consistently write great articles. Also, what if the one article you send them is on a topic they don’t want to cover? Or maybe they just did an article on it? By sending more than one article you give them a choice and you also greatly increase the odds that they will publish at least one article for you.

Here’s how you give the articles away: Contact these people. Do it through email, through Facebook, through Skype, whatever. Better yet, contact them through all of those methods at the same time. No, you’re not spamming them. You are HELPING them. Send them a very friendly, upbeat message that includes the following points:

– You’ve been reading their blog

– You love what they write

– You’ve written exclusive articles just for them

– The articles are free – they can do whatever they want with them

– No strings attached

– You would like (LOVE!) to be a guest writer on their blog

– If they would publish one of your articles on their blog with your author’s box to help you get exposure, that would be totally awesome

– Thank you

What you’ve just done:

* You’ve made contact and you’ve GIVEN them something right off the bat, no strings attached. What happens when 99 out of 100 people contact a blog owner? They WANT something. But you are GIVING something, and it’s something totally cool, too: Well written articles that are perfect for their blog.

* You’ve got a new contact in your field. Do you think s/he might want more articles? And maybe they will even promote one of your own products? It could happen, and it starts with this initial contact.

* You’ve solved a problem for this new contact – you’ve given him or her high quality content. If you’re a blog owner, you know how hard it can be to create new content week after week. Having help is always much appreciated.

* You’ve got some serious link juice going. You’re contacting BIG blogs with major traffic, many of which will be posting your articles. Think Google will notice? Absolutely!

* You’ve got traffic. FREE traffic. Highly TARGETED, raving fanatical traffic visiting your website.

* You are building a LIST out of this traffic. A list of highly targeted people who think you must be an expert because you write articles on important blogs. Traffic that reads your stuff. Traffic that BUYS your stuff.

* You are making money immediately with your OTO. Remember, you’ve got a low priced and highly targeted OTO after your squeeze page. This product is something directly related to the issue you wrote about in the article and in the report.

Total cost for this list building/product selling business? If you do everything yourself, it costs you nothing but time. If you outsource the squeeze page and articles, it might run you a couple of hundred dollars, more or less.

What do you do now? Rinse and repeat. Continue writing articles (or having someone write articles for you) and continue contacting new blogs. Write more articles for the blogs on which you’ve already been published.

This works. Don’t reinvent the wheel – just do it.

The downside is you will find a few blog owners who simply won’t publish your stuff. That’s okay. Most times they will tell you that they won’t, and then you can take those same articles and offer them to a different blog.

Power Tip: A variation to sending them 2-3 articles is to send one 3-part series. It’s got to be totally researched, relevant and on a hot topic. If you get them to publish this (generally over the course of 3-5 days) you will see even more traffic than you would from getting one regular article published.

Now let’s talk hypothetical numbers just to get a feel for what this system can do for you: You contact one blog that gets 250,000 visitors a month. 25% of them read your article (that’s kind of a low number – you might get more.) Of those who read your article, 40% click your link, and 50% of those get your free report (meaning they joined your list.)

That’s 250,000 times .25, which is 62,500 people who read your article. How cool is that?? Just imagine for a second that 62,500 people read your article and see your byline – you’re already an expert and they haven’t even clicked on your author’s resource box yet.

Of those 62,500 people, 40% click your link. That’s 25,000 people going to your squeeze page. I don’t know about you, but when I think about getting 25,000 HIGHLY targeted people to my squeeze page, my heart beats a little faster and you can’t wipe the grin off my face.

Of those, we’re hypothetically saying that half join your list. I know some of you are thinking that number is high, and for the typical squeeze page it is high. But in this case they’ve just read your article on a high authority website and obviously liked it. They already know why they are coming to your page (to get your super-duper hot report on a topic they’re really interested in) and so unless your squeeze page is awful, you can expect to get a higher than average conversion.

Half of 25,000 is 12,500 new people on your list. People who have read your article. People who think you’re pretty hot stuff. People who are now going to read your report and KNOW you are pretty hot stuff. People who are far more likely than average to open and read your emails.

12,500 people from one article. Okay, true, you had several articles written and probably sent 3 of those to the blog owner, who maybe only published one. Still – is that a good return on your time and money or what???

And if you only do 1/10th as well as our example? Then you still have 1,250 highly targeted new subscribers. Not bad.

To those skeptics who think that only the “big dogs” can make money online, I hope I have just given you something to think about, and more importantly – a plan of ACTION.

It’s the New Year. What better time to roll up your sleeves and put this to work?

One more number I want to throw out here: Suppose you got 12,500 new subscribers per month. Maybe you did it with one article, maybe it took you 20 articles. Whatever. Each month you do what it takes to get 12,500 new subscribers. Assuming a high attrition rate of 20%, how many subscribers would you have by the next holiday season?

I’ll leave you to do your own math on this one.

Happy New Year!!!

There’s a common theory that you’ve got to warm up your list for a few days, or even a few weeks before you try to sell them anything. But if someone came to your website looking for answers and opted into your list – then they are a hot prospect right NOW.

That’s why you should go ahead and make them an offer within the first 7 days. In fact, make them 2 or 3 offers.

Yes, you still need to provide some great content, whether it’s telling captivating stories or giving them hot tips. But at the end of each email be sure to make them an offer they can’t refuse. You may be surprised how many of your prospects become customers in that first week. And as you know, once they buy from you they are far more likely to buy again and again, as long as you continue to make them happy.

But we’re not done yet. In addition to making them offers via email in the first week, you also want to make them an offer IMMEDIATELY.

Let’s say they sign up to get your free report on 10 ways to banish acne. If you’re using single opt-in, they’re now on your list. So instead of sending them to a page that tells them to check their email for their free report, send them to a sales page that tells them the free report will be sent to their email shortly, and in the meantime to check out the one time fantastic offer you have for them.

Depending on your offer, there’s no reason why you can’t convert 10% or far more of these prospects into IMMEDIATE buyers with this simple technique. And best of all, it’s something you set up once and then you can forget about it, earning yourself a nice little additional income while you continue to grow your list.

No matter how hard you try to prevent it, sooner or later you’ll have prospects land on your 404 error page. When they do, they have a choice – try to find what they were looking for or give up. Care to guess what happens more often? They leave in frustration.

So instead of the usual “Whoops! We’re sorry but what you’re looking for has moved” page, consider customizing your error pages to get these people to do something.

For example, you could give them an option to opt into your list with an offer that is different than your landing page. This can be highly effective. For example…

“Congrats! You just found our secret page where we give away ___. Just tell us where to send it and it’s yours.”

Or you might make them an offer they can’t refuse, such as a great deal on one of your most popular products, or a combination offer for a super low price. Like this…

“Oops! You just landed on our error page, but we’re going to make it up to you. Here’s $xx.xx off of our super hot selling ___.”

For one reason or another, if you have your own website online long enough, you’re going to start getting a stream of people who land on a page of your website that does not exist, and leads them to a 404 error. Plan in advance for this hidden opportunity and you can turn some of the strayed visitors into subscribers and customers.

Popular thought says there’s something about turning 40 that makes one think, “Holy ^%!*, I could actually get old one day.” Then 50 starts approaching at warp light speed, and some start to think whole new thoughts, like, “Where did I put my keys?” And, “What did I come into this room for?” And “What was I going to write in my blog post? Wait, what’s my password? Never mind the password, what’s my domain again?”

If you can’t relate yet, good for you, and I hope you never do! In fact, this article is meant to inspire you to avoid such mental collapse.

No matter what your age, you can benefit from a better brain. And I don’t mean trading your brain in for a new one, although that could be awesome. I mean growing your own brain so that it functions better, makes new connections and thinks up creative new ideas constantly. Just like there’s weight training and cardio for the body, certainly there must be ways to improve how your brain functions so that everyday tasks like running your online business and finding new ways to make it profitable become like child’s play. At least, that’s what I was hoping to find.

So I started doing some research into the brain and how it works and what a person can do to improve it. And you know what? You have to be a brain scientist to understand all that stuff. So I took a shortcut – I bought a book by a brain researcher with 20+ years of experience in actively building or growing his own brain. The book is called Whole Brain Power, and the exercises he recommends are not at all what I was expecting.

First discovery I made – the brain actually does grow from nurturing and training it. Second discovery – left handed people have more brain mass and a more flexible brain structure than right handed people. You might be wondering how they know that: UCLA did a study of 70 pairs of identical twins where one twin was right handed, the other left handed, with an average age of 70. The lefties almost invariably had better brains.

Put these two pieces of information together, along with a lot of scientific data I won’t get into, and you find that by using your non-dominant hand to do things like write and play sports, you are actually growing your brain. Plus memorization can work wonders, too.

Here’s a tangible example of brain growth: London’s famous black-cab cabbie drivers must store a mental map of London, including 25,000 street names and the locations of all major tourist attractions. It takes 3 years of intensive study to pass the test, and three-quarters of the applicants drop out. When they studied the brains of these cabbies, they found their hippo-campus had grown. In fact, the longer they spent on the job, the bigger their brains. This and other studies prove you can physically improve your brain if you work at it.

Doing these exercises have side benefits as well. Within 3 to 4 weeks of consistent training you’ll notice you’re more alert, you have greater focus and your attention span improves. Work will become easier, you’ll write blog posts faster, and you’ll begin seeing possibilities in your business that were all but invisible to you before. Plus your memory will get better, you’ll experience more energy, your chance of getting Alzheimer’s decreases and other benefits as well.

So what are the prescribed exercises for growing your brain? I’ll go over some of them briefly.

For purposes of explanation, I’m going to assume you’re right handed. If you’re left handed, just reverse what I say.

Anything that you normally do with your right hand like brushing your teeth, combing your hair, eating with a fork, etc., try doing with your left hand every day.

Write with your left hand. Get a notebook and write something on the right page with your right hand. Then write that same thing on the left page with your left hand. Your right hand (left brain) is actually training your left hand (right brain) using this method. If you like, use mirror writing when writing with your left hand. That is, write from right to left in such a way that the writing is legible when viewed in a mirror. Leonardo Da Vinci did this and he was no intellectual slouch.

By the way, it’s no coincidence that Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth were all ambidextrous.

Memorize and recite things forwards and backwards. For example, learn to say the alphabet as fast backwards as you do forwards. Memorize states or countries in reverse alphabetical order. Memorize long poems, speeches or soliloquies. While you’re at it, learn a new language. And memorize number sequences such as the powers of 2 all the way up to 30 or beyond (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384 etc.)

Do hammer drills. To start, get a lightweight (1 pound or so) rubber mallet and using your right hand bounce a tennis ball on it. Bounce once and catch, bounce once and catch. When you get good, bounce twice and catch, then three times, working your way to bouncing 5 times and catching the ball. Now transfer the mallet to your left hand and repeat. Be patient, your brain wants to learn this new skill. Move up to using a golf ball and increase the number of reps. When you can do 100-300 on either hand, place a mallet in both hands and bounce the ball from the right to the left and back again. Once you can do this successfully for 100 reps or more, get a heavier hammer. Sounds crazy, but the benefits – both to the brain and the body – are enormous. Here’s a helpful video on hammer drills:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWl9W0kg6j4

Avoid passive stress from television and video games. You know how your mom said those things would rot your brain? Turns out she was right.

There’s a lot more, like games you can play and the science behind all of this. I highly recommend you get a copy of the book. It’s called Whole Brain Power: The Fountain of Youth for the Mind and Body by Michael Lavery.

If you’re wondering if all this stuff works, go to chapter 5 and look at the before and after photos of the artwork done by C. Ryan Walsh for the documentary film, Brain Dead: The Resurrection of a Video Game Junkie. In 45 days his artwork went from what I would describe as a 2nd or 3rd grade level to a 12th grade level, assuming the 12th grader had practiced art for 12 years. Absolutely mind boggling.

One last thing – what could you accomplish in your Internet business if you were smarter? If your memory was better? If you were more creative? If you had more energy? If you had more concentration and focus?

What couldn’t you accomplish??

I get a lot of questions about how to build a business online. Here’s some of the top questions and answers to help you get your own online business started and profitable.

Q. I keep hearing that I’ve got to get people to know me, like me and trust me before they’ll buy from me, but how do I do that?

A. You’ve got two choices, and I recommend you do both. First, position yourself as an expert in your field. If you’re not an expert, surround yourself with experts by interviewing them, letting them guest post to your blog and working with them. Second, be generous. Give away great content that instills confidence in your abilities and expertise that builds your reputation. Offer free tele-classes or podcasts, guest post on popular blogs with info-packed posts, and author a book or report.

The better your free content is, the more people will trust you and your content. As an added bonus they’ll also be more likely to share your content with others, thereby helping you to build your reputation and your following.

Q. Is there a way to reach a wider audience while simultaneously delivering more value to my current customers?

A. You might consider lining up some partnerships or joint ventures in your niche. First, make a list of the areas your customers are interested in. You’re not looking for direct competition here, but rather complimentary sub-niches. For example, if you teach how to do Forex with a certain method, your customers will likely be interested in how to trade on Forex with other methods, and even how to invest in other areas besides the Forex market.

Once you make your list of areas, choose an expert in each that you’d like to partner with. Go online to get their contact information and then approach them with a win-win-win reason of why they should partner with you. They should benefit, you should benefit and of course your customers need to benefit as well.

Do something together that you can offer to both your customers and your partner’s customers, whether it’s a free webinar with an offer at the end, or creating a series of videos together, or even creating a new membership with a free introductory period. This will add value to your customers and theirs, as well as expanding your reach to a wider audience.

Q. I’m just a newbie in my niche – how do I approach the “big dogs” and get their attention so they’ll partner with me?

A. Two words – help them. Comment on their posts, share their stuff through social media, ask if you can re-post their work to your blog, etc. Find a way to be of service to them so that you can get on their radar and start building a relationship for the long haul.

Note that the bigger the person you’re targeting (IE: The larger their following and the greater their influence in your market) the longer it’s going to take to attract their attention as someone they might want to work with. It’s recommended that you begin by targeting more accessible people and work your way up to the giants of your industry.

Also, consider writing a book, devoting one chapter to each “big dog” you are targeting. In this manner you can make friends with these players, and some of them will actually end up promoting your book to their audience.

Q. I keep hearing that I need to “have a story” to share with prospects. What does this mean?

A. In a marketing context, ‘your story’ is what led to you doing what you do today. For example, someone who teaches basketball techniques may have been a lousy basketball player themselves until they learned and mastered certain fundamentals and techniques that caused them to become an all star player. In a nutshell, that’s their story. Of course they’re going to want to embellish with details, such as how rotten they felt when they got laughed at for missing the easiest of shots.

The purpose of having your own story and sharing it with your readers is to make a connection. Someone having trouble making the junior varsity basketball team wants to know you went through some of the same trials and tribulations they are experiencing. This bonds them to you and causes them to be far more receptive to your message. Remember, “birds of a feather flock together.” Once they realize you’ve been through the same struggles they’re currently going through, and that you not only persevered but overcame, they’ll want to know exactly how you did it.

Q. But isn’t that manipulating them?

A. Not at all. You are showing that you have indeed walked in their shoes, experienced their problems and found a solution that works.

I heard a story once that illustrates this beautifully. Imagine you’re in a foreign country and you don’t speak the language. For days you’ve been struggling to understand and be understood. Then all of a sudden someone says hello to you in your language, and asks how you are. How would you react? No doubt you’d rush up to that person and start talking, feeling that you finally are making a connection with someone. Imagine the relief you would feel, finally being able to communicate, to understand and most of all to be understood.

Telling your story does the same thing – it creates a bonding connection that lets the prospect know that you understand what they’re going through because you’ve experienced the same problems they have.

Q. If I want to create a product or success system based upon my own personal experiences, how do I go about that?

A. If you’ve become really successful at something, you have a ready-made product you can sell to others who want to master that same skill. Here’s how to get it into product form: Recall where you were at the beginning of your success. What was the first thing you did? The second? Write down everything that you did and put it into step-by-step form.

Now you’ve got the ___ number of steps to accomplishing ___. Name it something appropriate, get the domain for that name and start marketing it. You could do it as an ebook or audio/video course, or you could offer it as a series of webinars or even one-on-one coaching. Each step will represent one chapter in your book, or one webinar, or one coaching session.

HOT TIP: You can use this exact same process to partner with anyone who’s mastered a skill others want to learn. Interview them extensively to discover exactly how they reached their success and then create the product based on the interviews. Split the profits with the expert and rinse and repeat with more experts or the same expert and different topics.

Q. I have a friend and fellow marketer who’s continually writing posts for other people’s blogs. I think she’s foolish because she’s giving away her valuable info on other blogs instead of using it on her own to boost her standing in the search engines. She says it’s worth it because she’s getting new prospects through her guest posts. Who’s right?

A. You both are correct, to a degree. While it’s true that placing her best content on her own blog may help to get her site ranking in the search engines, SEO is always a gamble. On the other hand, guest posting on popular blogs practically guarantees exposure to new prospects as well as new alliances with the blog owners.

When your friend guest posts, she’s hopefully targeting blogs that already receive plenty of traffic interested in her particular niche. This will help her to gain exposure to new audiences and get her endorsed by leaders in her field (the blog owners).

Q. I’ve contacted blog owners about being a guest blogger for them, but because I’m new in the niche I don’t get much response. What can I do?

A. Begin by posting repeatedly in their comments section. Join in the conversation, add relevant comments, ask good questions and answer other people’s questions. Hyperlink your name to your website to get new visitors (this is automatic when you fill out the comment form – just be sure to fill out the website URL box as well as your name, and your name will become a hyperlink to your URL.)

Use a catchy, memorable photo on all of your posts. Register your email address along with your photo at: en.gravatar.com

By taking part in the community, the blog owner will likely notice you and will be far more receptive next time you offer to do a blog post. In addition, visitors to the blog will also begin to recognize you and visit your blog as well.

Q. I write a newsletter, but lately I get the feeling that no one is reading it. What am I doing wrong?

A. You may need to get back in touch with your market to find out what it is they want to know. Go to forums and watch social media to find out what they’re talking about and especially what they’re asking. Ideally you should be answering their questions and helping to solve their problems, because when you do that they will read every word of your newsletter.

Q. I HATE writing headlines and subject lines, and I don’t like using headline templates. Any ideas?

A. Interestingly enough, your best headline is often buried inside your copy or your email. You already know all the best selling points about your product, how best to present it, who your target market is, and how to craft the best call to action. So forget the headline, write your copy or email, and then go back and reread what you just wrote. Oftentimes you’ll find your jewel of a headline right there inside your copy, just waiting for you to pluck it out and place it at the top.

You already know that a buyer is generally worth ten times more than a prospect who signs up for a free product. Here’s the best way to continually build a list of buyers without having to buy solo ads or place advertising.

Create a simple product that solves one pressing problem in your niche. This might be a video, audio or ebook – it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that it delivers on exactly what it promises.

Create a simple sales page for the product and price it in the $7 to $12 range, depending on prices in your market. This should be an impulse buy for customers, not something they have to think long and hard about.

Use a program such as Rapid Action Profits or JVZoo to manage affiliates and pay 100% commissions. That’s right, you’re going to pay 100% instant commissions to affiliates because you want to give them maximum incentive to send you traffic. Right now you’re looking to build a list of buyers, and by offering 100% commissions your affiliates are going to be happy to send them to you.

Advertise your affiliate program to your list and via social media.

If you like, add an upsell to the offer that pays you. This way you’ll not only be building a list of buyers – you’ll also be making profit from the start.

Market products to your list to make money, and market your affiliate program to your list to continue to bring in more affiliates. Also, advertise your affiliate program inside the product itself. Some of your best affiliates will first be your customers.

Rinse and repeat. Optimally you want 5 to 10 fairly new products that pay 100% instant commissions to affiliates so that your affiliates always have something they can promote.

Continue to build and nurture your list of affiliates – these are equally important as your customers. Give your affiliates your products for free as you create each one, so they can see what they’ll be offering their customers and continue to use social media to find new affiliates.

This strategy can be launched easily and scaled consistently to develop a 6 or 7 figure business online. You wouldn’t be the first and you won’t be the last to follow this model to build a thriving online business.

Oddly enough I see this question pop up every so often in popular online marketing forums. Sometimes I even see people get pretty upset about the answers they get, demanding proof that a person is making money writing articles. So I thought maybe it’s time to add my own two cents.

Yes, article marketing is all but dead if you’re referring to posting junk articles on article directories and expecting people to knock down your virtual door. Thanks to the changes in Google over the years, those days are over and done. Even posting an outstanding article on a site like Ezine Articles likely won’t garner you more than a few website visits a week at most – probably not enough to make it worth your while. Because if you’re writing quality content that people really want to read, there are far better places you can place your own articles.

For instance, you can place them on your own website. These days Google is rewarding sites full of quality information with better rankings, so why not fill your own website with your truly great articles?

What do I mean by quality information? First, it’s got to be material people actually want to read. This means you’ve got to have some basic writing skills or readers won’t go past the first paragraph. Second, the content has to be something that will empower them, improve their life or solve a problem. In other words, what’s in it for them to read your article?

Third, it has to be relevant. Offering up last year’s SEO techniques isn’t going to cut it, and in fact it will earn you some nasty comments and a hit to your reputation. Either know what you’re talking about, or find an expert who does.

Okay, so you’ve got some great articles on your own website – time to find other sites who are looking for your content. Ideally you want sites that get a lot of traffic but don’t post a ton of content. This way your article will stay featured for a longer period of time, plus it’s more likely to appear in the “most popular posts” section.

Once you’ve got some guest articles (or guest posts, if you prefer) out there, contact those site owners about possibly writing for them on a continuing basis. If you’re submitting an article a month to say, 10 different sites, that’s 10 sites sending visitors back to your site. And that can be far more powerful than Ezine Articles ever was.

Lastly, see if you can get articles published in real life magazines. That’s right – magazines like Entrepreneur and Wired. Sure it’s harder to break into those, but what a coup if you do!