Author Archive | Lawrence

Let’s be candid – You can discover these outsourcing secrets the easy way or the hard way, but you’re going to find this out sooner or later.

The hard way is the way most marketers do it. They make mistakes when outsourcing, lose time and/or money, and then learn from their mistakes.

I propose we cut out all that nonsense and I’ll just tell you what you need to know here and now. Ready?

1: Outsource customer service as soon as humanly possible.

Reason why: If you don’t, you’ll waste half of each day doing things like answering support tickets, changing email addresses for members who changed their email address (yes, that is a thing) issuing refunds, answering questions and so forth.

That is time you could spend doing something else like… let’s see… wait, I know – MAKING MONEY.

Your focus should be on building your business, not answering support tickets (“When I log in, I see a funny thing at the top that says I’m logged in… is that what it’s supposed to say?”) I’m not kidding, that is a real support ticket I once received.

Another reason why: Your virtual assistant who is handling your support can shield you from the negative ninnies. What’s a “negative ninny,” you ask? It’s that person who buys your product and then rants on for 6 pages on how awful your product is, how awful you are and so forth. You don’t need to hear that stuff. Just tell your V.A. to handle it for you without ever telling you about it. (In this case, refunding the person and removing them from every list is all that’s required.)

And by the way, if you’re thinking that your products will be so great, everyone will love them, well then I know you haven’t created any products yet.

I don’t care if you invent the method for turning pixels into gold, someone will hate it. And that’s okay, as long as you don’t have to hear about it.

2: Outsource the things that bring you profit FIRST.

So let’s say you want to outsource website building, content creation, product creation, sales writing, software creation and so forth.

Ask yourself this question: What’s going to bring me the fastest return on my money?

That’s the project to outsource first.

Maybe you pay someone to create a product for you, and then you turn around and sell that product to hundreds of buyers. BOOM! You’ve just made your money back and much more.

But what if you don’t have any customers yet? And no list? Then maybe you need to outsource the building of your squeeze page so you can start list building so you can start selling stuff to your list.

Whatever will put you in profit first is the thing you need to outsource first. This way you are not coming out of pocket by thousands and thousands of dollars without a return.

3: Pay outsources based on the JOB, not by an hourly rate.

You want to know going in what it’s going to cost you to get a specific job done. And a true professional will be able to tell you exactly what it will cost.

A lot of marketers make the mistake of paying by the hour to get a job done. So not only don’t they know exactly what the job will cost – they also don’t know if the outsourcer is dragging the job out longer to make it pay more. Yes, it’s been known to happen.

The exception to the non-hourly rule?

Your virtual assistant or customer service person. Because of the nature of their work, in most cases paying them by the hour is the way to go.

4: Outsource work you’re putting off.

Did you create a new product, but you haven’t edited yet? Or maybe you haven’t built the website or made the sales letter.

All the time you invested in creating that product is going to waste. Outsource someone to do what you haven’t done, so you can get it online and start making sales ASAP.

5: Outsource what you’re not good at, and what you don’t like doing.

Sure, you love building websites, but let’s face it: You haven’t updated your website skills since 2007. Or you know how to write sales copy, but you HATE doing it.

Those are things you should be outsourcing. By focusing on your strengths as well as strategically planning your business, and letting other experts handle the rest of the work, you’ll make more money faster than if you try to do everything yourself.

6: Outsource the instrument playing while you conduct the orchestra.

There may come a time very soon when you have a system in place for making money. It could be as simple as creating a product in your niche, write several pieces of content preparing people for the product, record several videos leading up to the launch, and then launching.

Yet all of that is a lot of work. You’ve got sales copy to write, JV’s to contact, swipe emails to write, etc.

If you can afford it, outsource everything you can so that you can focus on working ON your business instead of IN your business.

People who focus on working on their business while outsourcing a lion’s share of the work tend to make 5 to 10 times as much money as those who work in their business.

Sort of a no-brainer, don’t you think?

7: If you haven’t yet outsourced something – what are you waiting for?

If you already have an online business, or you’re in the process of building one and you haven’t yet outsourced something, odds are it’s simply because fear is holding you back.

Go to Fiverr, Upwork, Craigslist or Warrior and outsource a small job, just to see how it works. I promise, you’ll be hooked and your business will grow twice as fast.

There is not a seven-figure internet marketer out there who doesn’t outsource. So isn’t it about time you did, too?

Here’s something I’ve been playing with, and my results have been pretty good, too. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing…

A few months ago a friend was launching a big product with lots of cash prizes for the top affiliates. I knew there would be tons of affiliate competition, with every affiliate trying to out-do the others with bigger and better bonuses.

How to compete?

I decided not to.

Instead, I thought about what every affiliate’s bonus pages would look like: Highly polished, slick, professional, lots of graphics, videos, etc.

Odds are they would all start to look very much alike, right?

So I thought… What if I did something different?

What if my page looked like something you might get in the mail – black and white sales letter, using the Courier typewriter font, very old-school looking…

And what if, instead of a highly polished professional photo of myself, I used one where I just woke up? Or one where I just finished exercising, or just finished the yard work?

In other words, I looked like the guy next door and not some slick marketer.

Taking this thinking to the next level, I decided I didn’t want to spend time or money on creating a bonus. Everyone else was doing that, so why should I?

Instead, I would hold a live class. The homework would be to go over the program before class. Then in class we would implement, step-by-step, what was in the program. And I would record the whole thing, so people could just follow along.

In case you’re wondering – it worked beautifully. My sales were a very decent 5 figure number, and my commissions were half that plus bonuses.

And one more thing – I cheated, too. I had my virtual assistant run the class for me. She got to learn some great new skills, and I put less than 2 hours into the entire project.

The takeaway: When you have a lot of competition, it’s time to stop directly competing and find another way.

If they are using tons of graphics and slick videos, you go with a 1980’s black and white typewriter look.

If they are offering bonus packages filled with 5, 10 or 20 products, you offer no products (I offered hold-your-hand training, which in my opinion is worth far more anyway.)

You get the idea.

Do you know what would work even better than that?

MAILING the actual letter. Yup. Talk about old school. If you collect real addresses of your BUYERS, you might consider doing this on big ticket items.

I know marketers who do this. They are few and far between, and they are KILLING it. They only mail to buyers, which greatly improves their conversions. They use a service to send out the mailers for them. And they make more on one of these mailings than most successful marketers earn in 6 months.

Which brings me to my second idea… if you don’t already have the mailing addresses for your buyers, start collecting those now.

When you have a sizable portion of them (at least 200, preferably 500) approach a marketer with a product your list would love. Make sure there is plenty of profit in that product. Take the sales letter, adapt it to a black and white mailer (cheap to produce) and send it to your buyers.

See what happens. Tweak, rinse and repeat.

You can easily DOUBLE your income using this method.

Know why? Again, because it’s contrary. It’s different. Almost no one is doing it.

Your customer gets maybe a half dozen pieces of mail in a day. Two are bills. Two are sales flyers from local businesses. One is a catalog.

And then there’s that mysterious white envelope. Yeah, it’s going to get opened. Yes, it’s going to get read.

Wow! They’re surprised. Someone they know from ONLINE is sending them REAL MAIL.

They don’t throw it out. Instead, they open their browser, type in the URL and ORDER THE PROGRAM.

Sure, not everyone does, but… enough do.

Believe me, I’ve seen this work time and time again. Which is why I’m about to start sending out sales letters via snail mail (Shhh, don’t tell anyone!)

Pssst… I know you’ve probably never done this, but I have. I’ve sat down and binge watched a whole bunch of episodes from one series on Netflix, and yes, I enjoyed it.

There, now that I have my confession out the way, I have to tell you what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Why is it that we binge watch shows on Netflix, but we dole out content to our readers like it’s bread crumbs? And scarce bread crumbs, at that?

Think about it – you want to learn something new. Maybe you want to learn everything you can about video marketing.

So you start looking, and you find a great article on a website about this exact thing. The site even offers to send you an entire email course on video marketing and you sign up.

Problem is, you want the rest of the course NOW. So you keep searching, and you land on other sites and read other articles and watch other videos.

And you forget all about that first site you were at.

A day later you get an email – installment #1 of your course. But you already learned everything you needed the other day. You’ll look at it later…

Yeah. Right. You never read those emails, do you?

I’ve done the same thing plenty of times. Yet I still parse out my content to readers as though they are doing absolutely nothing but sitting there, waiting for the latest installment…

When in fact they’ve probably forgotten all about me.

Or what about those product launches where they dole out one video every three days? “Watch this fantastic video to discover blah blah blah.” And you watch it, and you LOVE it, and you want to see the rest of the videos. Except they’re not online yet.

“The next video will be available in X days.” You don’t want to wait “X” days, you want to see it NOW.

And when it’s finally available, you’ve forgotten all about it. The ironic thing is, if they had all of the videos online when you were interested, you would have watched all of them right away. And if they were done well, you might have bought the product they promoted at the end of the last video, too.

But by the time the product is launched, you don’t even remember what they were talking about.

Been there, done that. Many times, too.

And then there’s the simple article on your website. You do one article about video marketing, one article about content marketing, one article about SEO, etc.

The reader finishes the article they’re interested in and looks for more on the same topic. There are no more. And so they leave.

Whoops.

Mind you, all three of these techniques worked great a few years ago. And I’m not saying they don’t work now. But I guarantee they are not working nearly as well as they used to.

And we can thank Netflix for that, and the internet, and the proliferation of ‘what you want, when you want it’ in just about every niche imaginable.

We are no longer content to wait. We want our information NOW, while we are hot about the topic. Not later.

And your readers and viewers are no different.

So what’s the solution?

We give our readers and viewers the opportunity to binge all they want.

You’ve got an article on your site about generating targeted traffic? Good. Now write 5 more, all on different aspects or techniques of traffic generation, and link them all together.

When someone finishes any one of those 6 articles, they find links at the bottom that take them to any of the other 5 articles. They now have CHOICES on where to go next, and all of the choices are good ones because they are directly related to what they just chose to read.

They also find a link that takes them to your super-duper traffic generation product, too.

If your articles are good, they’ll keep clicking and reading. And if they are impressed enough, they will eventually click on that product link they keep seeing.

And you will make sales.

Your readers will be happy because they found everything they needed in one place.

You will be happy because they stay on your site longer, they’re more likely to subscribe to your newsletter, and you’re making sales.

What about those email courses – why not let the reader accelerate the process?

At the bottom of each email in the sequence, you can let them know that the next installment is coming tomorrow. Or, they want to see it now, simply ‘click here.’

In fact, if you want to use tracking for engagement analytics, you might accelerate the process for the reader. Did they engage with emails 1 and 2? Maybe it’s time to send them straight to email #5, and so forth.

The more engaged your reader is, the more options they should have to continue consuming your content.

As a marketer you have an excellent incentive to do this, which we’ve already hinted at.

When someone is hot on the trail of a particular topic, or looking to solve a particular problem, you don’t want to present them with your offer next week – you want to present it NOW. Because they’ve engaged with your content, they’re hot. They like you. They’re trusting you. They want MORE. So give it to them.

Let them know that as good as your content is, the REAL meat is in your product. And watch them bite. Go ahead… Give your readers the Netflix experience they really want!

When you’re an expert, you command respect in your niche. People listen to you, they pay attention to what you say and most of all they buy your products.

Being the expert in your own niche is like writing your own ticket to freedom.

Granted, you’re never going to become “The Expert” in a massive field such as weight loss. But niche it down to “Weight loss for new mothers” or “Weight loss for brides-to-be” or Weight loss for video gamers,” and you can indeed become the expert in your niche.

I was reading Russell Brunson’s new book, “Expert Secrets,” and it starts out by giving some examples of just how easy it is to become an expert.

When Russell was in college, he tried internet marketing but failed. Then on spring break when he was bored out of his mind, he and a friend decided to build a potato gun.

The thing was, they didn’t know HOW to build a potato gun. It just sounded like fun. So they started doing some research.

They discovered things like the correct barrel-to-chamber volume ratio, the right propellants to use, the correct pressure for the pipes, how NOT to blow themselves up and a whole lot more. Armed with this information, they went to the store and bought their supplies. Then they spent the next few days building the gun, finding a place to shoot it and yes, shooting the gun itself.

They had a great time, and when Russell was in school the next week listening to the professor drone on, he thought about how he’d rather be shooting his potato gun. Then he wondered if there were other people who would rather be shooting a potato gun too.

Russell checked, and sure enough: the previous month there had been 18,000 searches for the term, ‘potato gun plans.’

Russell talked his friend into creating a DVD on how to source the items needed for building a potato gun, and how to build the gun itself.

Then he sold this DVD online. While he didn’t make a fortune, he did earn enough to get excited about online marketing and his new career was born.

Notice in the above scenario what Russell did to become an expert. He picked a topic he was interested in, researched it, experimented, did his own work, and created a video.

Not exactly hard work, was it?

Russell gives a few more examples of people who became ‘experts’ in the same manner:

Jacob Hiller always wanted to dunk a basketball, but he was lousy at it. So he started doing research to discover techniques to improve his ability to jump. Every time he found a technique that worked, he made a video.

At first nobody was paying attention, but after a while he had 100 followers, then 1,000 followers, and pretty soon he had 10,000 followers.

So he made a product and built a company that makes millions of dollars teaching people how to jump. Crazy, but true.

Jermaine Griggs had trouble reading sheet music, so learned to play piano by ear. Now he makes millions teaching others to do the same.

Liz Benny was an excellent social media manager, but it wasn’t until she began teaching others what she knew that she started making millions.

Robert G. Allen once said that he made millions doing real estate deals, but he made hundreds of millions of dollars teaching real estate.

Think of that – he made MILLIONS doing real estate deals, but he made HUNDREDS of millions teaching others what he learned.

Are you an expert at something that other people want to learn? Then as Russell says, you are just one funnel away from making millions.

But maybe you don’t have an expertise yet – that’s okay. As you can see from the above examples, every one of these folks learned to be an expert first and then built their business teaching others to do what they did.

Even Russell wasn’t born an internet marketing guru. He studied and practiced and worked to become what he is today.

And the same goes for me and every single expert making 7 figures on the internet.

One last thing – you might already be an expert, but you’ve got a voice inside your head saying, “Who am I to teach others? I’m nobody special.”

You are indeed special but you just don’t know it yet.
What you know comes easy to you because you’ve studied and practiced.

Yet to most people, what you know seems like something very difficult.

They need your help.

They WANT your help.

So ask yourself this question: Who are you to deny them the help they need and want?

Think about all the people you can help with your skill. By focusing not on the money you’ll earn, but instead focusing on helping others, you can build a 7-figure business you can feel great about.

And by the way, you can purchase Russell’s book, “Expert Secrets,” on Amazon.

A certain percentage of new list subscribers will unsubscribe from your list almost immediately.

They’ll get the lead magnet you offered them and then POW! Unsubscribe. You’ve got to wonder why.

Are they afraid you’re going to sell them something? Maybe. If you’re building a list of online marketers, you’ve really got to wonder about their thinking. After all, don’t they want to learn about marketing? And isn’t getting on other people’s marketing lists a good way to learn?

Anyway, here is the trick to reducing these immediate unsubscribes no matter what your niche is:

On the letter that new subscribers get, remove the word “subscribe” and all of its variations.

You know the ones: “Thank you for subscribing,” or “You are now subscribed,” or “If you did not subscribe, please click here,” etc.

Whether the word is coming from your autoresponder or from you, get rid of it. Talk about the lead magnet and how to download it, but do not talk about their subscription.

Try this for a month, and then compare and see how much your unsubscribe rate has improved.

Every sale you make is a sale you have somehow purchased. And once you get your mind around this, marketing will become a lot easier.

Free traffic? There is no such thing. Maybe you didn’t spend money to get the traffic, but guaranteed you spent time.

Sales from affiliates? You spent time recruiting them and you are paying them a commission on each sale.

Sales to your own list? You bought those customers from the method you used to get them on your list, warming them up, getting them to trust you, etc.

You are always investing SOMETHING to make a sale.

Which is why, if you haven’t already, you need to learn to make $1.50 on every $1 of advertising you spend. By spending money on proven methods to get sales, you can rapidly scale up.

You spend $1,000 on Facebook ads and make $1,500? Congrats, you now have a sustainable business. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.

This is the ultimate goal – to stop spending your time and start investing your money to get sales.

After all, you only have so much time, and every minute is precious.

But when you can make money every time you invest money – NOW you are truly a marketer, and that six and seven figure business is just around the corner.

Let’s say you’re building a sales funnel to promote a new weight loss program.

Your lead magnet should detail ways to lose weight. But here’s the key – make these methods painful. Discouraging. Problematic. Complicated. Etc.

Maybe you give them a diet that’s difficult to follow. Or a workout plan that’s enough to make an athlete cry. Whatever.

It should be something that will definitely get the job done, IF they follow it.

But they won’t want to, which is the point.

Because then you will ‘save the day’ by offering them the ‘easy solution.’

Which is, of course, the program you are promoting.

This way you get the exact people you want to enter your funnel (people who want to lose weight) and you prime them to grab your easy solution, because otherwise it just seems too difficult.

This works for almost anything. Do you sell software? Make your lead magnet about how to manually get the same result your software will provide for them automatically.

Do you sell a book writing service? Tell them how to write a book in excruciating, pains-taking over the top detail. Remind them at the end of every chapter that you are there for them if they want to do what so many others have already done, and hire you to write their book for them while they go about their merry lives.

You get the idea.

Make your lead magnet helpful but painful. Then offer them the easy, fast solution they really want.

I recently saw a video clip of a heavy set young woman running behind a car.

The car’s trunk is open, and a young man is sitting in the car’s trunk facing the running woman. In the man’s hand is a stack of one dollar bills, and as the woman chases the car, the man repeatedly hands the woman a one dollar bill. If she keeps running, she gets more dollars. If she can’t keep up with the car, she gets no more money.

View post on imgur.com

Crazy? Maybe.

Effective? Only in the short term.

Is it realistic to do this every time she goes running? Probably not.

Which raises two questions:

First, what will motivate you in the short term to just get started on your next project? What will get you moving right now?

And what will keep you moving in the right direction over the long haul?

For example, if your goal is to write a book, then maybe treating yourself to a night out once you have your outline completed will get you started. But you can’t treat yourself to a night out for each milestone, can you? Maybe you can. But more likely this won’t continue to motivate you.

So what will keep you moving over the long haul to achieve your big goals? If you’re like most people, it’s focusing on the reason WHY you’re doing what you’re doing.

Take a moment and see your future once you’ve completed the goal. Is the picture motivating? Good.

Now keep replaying that ‘reason why’ in your head over and over and over again until you reach your goal.

This is what motivates people to do great things – focusing on that big reason of WHY they are doing it.

Ok, this is a rant but it needs to be said… I got another email the other day from someone lamenting at how darn difficult it is to start and run an online business. He went on and on about his struggles, challenges, problems… how he didn’t have anyone to sit right there and show him step by step what to do, that he had to read BOOKS and watch VIDEOS to learn things… He was literally convincing himself that he couldn’t do it.

This man is a friend of mine. He’s 42 years old, has a good job, a college education and a lousy attitude.

Finally I got sick of his whining and I sent him this note:

“Dear Peter,

What I’m about to say, I say with love and the deepest of respect.

I want to tell you about a 14 year old boy named William Kamkwamba.

William was born into poverty in a small Malawi village in Africa.

Because of a crippling famine, William was forced to drop out of school since his family could no longer afford the tuition. To further his education, William used his spare time to study books in the village library, where he evidently learned some stuff all on his own.

His village had no electricity and no running water. So at the ripe old age of 14 and using what he learned from those books, William built a wind turbine out of blue gum trees, bicycle parts and scrap.

This turbine along with future turbines William built powered his entire village.

Next, William built a solar-powered water pump to supply the first drinking water to his village.

Of course, William had many advantages you do not. He didn’t have decades of life experience like you do.

He didn’t know that things were supposed to be hard. He didn’t know to complain. He didn’t know that what you learn in books is useless.

You’re smarter than William. You know how hard it is to get motivated when you already have drinking water, food, a home and so forth.

And books – you know how difficult it is to read and learn from those silly things. After all, the only thing in them is the knowledge of experts who’ve already done the things you want to do.

You know how hard it is to move that mouse and tap those keys.

Starting an online business? You know it’s impossible.

But William… he didn’t know any of those things.

And at 14 he brought power and water to his entire village all by himself.

Maybe you could ask William to show you how to build your online business…

😉

Love,

Me.

You hired someone to do some writing for you. Problem is, the writing itself isn’t exactly what you’re looking for. Or maybe it’s just not written well, or you need some changes…

Or perhaps a marketing colleague has asked you for feedback on their writing, and frankly you hate it.

What can you do to help the person make the appropriate changes, without offending them?

Try making it about you and not about the writing.

For example, instead of saying, “The chronology is confusing,” you tell them that you got confused by the chronology.

Instead of, “The dialogue sounds too contrived,” tell them you’re having trouble relating to the dialog, and give them a specific example of what you mean and how it could be changed.

By making it about you, you’re not insulting the work or the author. You’re simply offering your own experience of the writing.

This helps no matter what you’re critiquing – software, artwork, a website, etc. You can also use the phrase, “Have you considered…” to make a suggestion they can think of as their own.

Business is a people sport, and you must develop skills to successfully communicate with and offer honest and sometimes painful feedback to others while maintaining rapport if you expect to be successful.

Apply some of the tips above and be sure to give feedback without hurting feelings… Of course, these same strategies can be helpful in your personal relationships as well. 😉