There is a kind of cruel, ancient story that goes like this… A group of people are standing at a river bank and suddenly they hear the pained cries of a baby. Shocked by what they are hearing, they then see an infant floating in discomfort in the water.
One person immediately dives in to rescue the child. But as the rescue is commencing, yet another baby comes floating down the river in the same way, and then another and another! People continue jumping in to save the babies and then see that one person has started to walk away from the group towards the bridge.
Angrily they shout at the person, “Where do you think you are going? Come here and help!”
The response was this: “I am. I’m going upstream to stop whoever’s throwing babies into the river!
The story is a mad one, but if we remove the content of the story and just focus on the metaphor, there is a massive lesson for us to learn both in business and in life.
When your online business is not working as well as you might hope and customers are not buying or your sales material isn’t converting – do not a/ blame them or b/ dive straight in and see the problem from the end.
You must go back to your strategy and check what is going on behind the scenes – what are you missing in the back-end that the front-end users are experiencing? It’s about focusing on the source of the problem and healing it, rather than trying to bail yourself out by adding more money or focus into something that is already flawed and not working. You need better foundations.
Imagine that the babies are your customers and each one is unhappy, there is no point in wasting your energy dealing with customers by trying to convince them that everything is fine and that they are wrong because your site/strategy (whatever) is perfect and other people have ‘said so’, instead go to the source – listen to them – why are people leaving? Why are the numbers decreasing? Why are people complaining? What can you do as a whole rather than trying to deal with the consequences?
Below are 3 overlooked things that I want you to focus on and see if there are any corrections to be made within your business that may be stopping your business from growing:
1. Are you using old strategies? Long form articles, chasing influencers and buying links are all old-school strategies that won’t grow your online business or presence as much as you think they might. It might have worked then, but you must move with whatever is working now.
2. Are you copying others or being authentic? We are told to model the already successful and yes, this is good. But not at the cost of who you are. People want an original, not a clone. If they want the person you are copying, they’ll go with them. You need to be you and don’t copy everything that the successful leaders are doing. What you want is to take what you need from others and design your own brand around it in a personal ‘you’ way.
3. Are you focused on building traffic? It doesn’t matter how good your website looks or how your funnels are set up… If you don’t have website traffic, you don’t have a business.
Current strategies that build traffic include interviews, podcasts and writing guest posts for large authority publications. You can always jazz up your systems if you have an audience, but it’s ineffective the other way around.
Ultimately, the problem unfortunately lies with you and how you are marketing, not the customers. If something isn’t going the way you want, don’t dive into the river to try and fix it, go to the bridge and see the root of the problem before moving on or throwing more money into an existing and floundering strategy.
During school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a pretty smart student and had gotten through the other questions quite easily, until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” I imagined this to be some kind of joke.
But when I thought about it, I realized I had seen the cleaning woman many times. She was short, dark haired and in her 60’s, but how would I know her name? I didn’t.
I handed in my paper, and just left the last question blank. Just before I left I asked the teacher if the last question would count towards our grade. “Absolutely,” said the professor.
“No matter what career you choose in life, you will meet many people. All are important. They deserve your attention and care, even if just by a smile and greeting.”
I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Clara.
Online, it is not as easy to obtain first names as it is in person but at least we have a better way to store them when our memories fail.
The professor was right, in fact, as it turns out, our names are so important to us that hearing them lights up entirely different part of our brain than any other words, scientists tell us.
Using your customer’s name makes them like you more, also using your own name makes the interaction feel more personal, too.
For example, who would you rather get an email from, “John” or “The Support Team”?
Personal names make a shopping experience much more enjoyable as does hanging out with people who know your name in real life, it just feels more respectful, more engaging and friendly.
Firstly, when sending emails, avoid the lazy trap of ‘Dear Customer’. Use their first name every time.
If customers call you, try and use their name in the first sentence as an instant rapport builder. This is especially helpful in calming an irate customer down quite quickly by seeming more authentic and familiar.
For some of you, when booking a callback, arranging a meeting or getting people to leave their names and numbers, ensure you have their names written in your diary on that date and any other bits of information you can get in that first interaction.
Then when you recall accurately the words of the last conversation you had with them or ask them a more familiar question using their name, you’ll instantly make the customer feel like you know them and so they relax with you.
Another trick of the name remembering trade is to create stories or rhymes in your head associated with the person’s name you want to remember and genuinely try to use it when you bump into them. It’s a great way to build connections and friends in person that may one day be useful to your company or idea, on or offline.
People like their name being used, and it will be a boost to your business and relationships in general if you make the effort to use them every chance you get.
That’s the question posed in an online forum recently. Answers ran the gamut of the spectrum, but here are the 28 I found especially helpful, in completely random order…
Become financially educated. Read personal finance management books, starting with Rich Dad Poor Dad. Learn how to budget and how to invest.
Live frugally. If you’re thinking you can’t save more of your money, take a look at homeless people who live on almost nothing. Yes, you can save money. Stop eating out so often. Cancel the cable. Don’t buy a new car. Don’t buy a new used car until you absolutely need one.
Always pay yourself first. Devote the first 10-30% of your pay to savings and investments.
Spend money on assets (real estate, stocks, bonds, etc.) not liabilities (everything that loses value the moment you purchase it). Thinking of buying a new car even though your old one is fine? Take that money and invest it in your business, in stocks, in real estate or something that is an asset. Then buy a good used car in a few years, when you really need one.
Don’t care what people think of you. Your neighbors think you’re poor because you don’t buy new cars? Little do they know that $20,000 you would have spent on a car is now earning you a 10% compound interest rate.
Invest in yourself. Self-education equals new knowledge. Add execution to that new knowledge and you get results. Repeat continuously.
Find ways to help as many people as possible. The more you can help others get what they want, the more money you can make.
Scale. Don’t render services when you can mass produce products. Better to make a $10 profit on a million sales than a $1,000 profit on 100 sales.
Stuck on services? Go upscale. If you’re going to render services, find the niches that pay the most.
Have multiple streams of income. This way if something happens to one, you are still in good shape overall.
Sell stuff. Lots of stuff. Hire others to help you, so that your earnings are no longer tied to your hours.
Always keep the return on investment in mind, whether your investment is time or money.
When you want to buy something, figure out how to make the money. Don’t take money out of your savings to buy a car or a vacation. Instead, figure out how to make the extra money needed to cover the new expense.
Be friends with people who have more money than you. Their mindsets and thought processes will rub off on you. That said, do not try to compete with them – keep the car and house you have now, at least for a while.
Leverage your abilities to their fullest extent instead of working harder to get ahead. Forget working hard and focus on working smart. For example, a personal coach can create a course and sell it for $297 a million times over, but can only coach a few people one-on-one at any given time.
Take calculated risks. Failure is a part of the journey. If you’re too afraid to fail, you will never take the smart, calculated risks needed to become wealthy.
Use your head more than your heart. Make your financial decisions based on provable fact rather than gut instinct.
If you have a business, work ON it, not in it. Your labor isn’t needed to make the business a success – your ideas and leadership are.
Things like sports and entertainment are simply distractions for the masses. While you’re watching sports and shows 2-6 hours a day, the rich are making million dollar contacts, doing deals and starting businesses. If you get more of whatever you focus on – maybe it’s time to stop focusing on distractions and start focusing on your finances.
Bad decisions are better than no decisions. Any decision that moves you forward is better than total inaction. The key is make decisions quickly and work until you get results.
Confidence and belief in your ability will take you further, faster. The higher your confidence and the more you believe in what you’re doing, the easier it is to bring others on board, to convince buyers and to make money.
Having a lot of money doesn’t change life as much as you think. It’s not a magic shield from illness, tragedy or loss. You’re no smarter for having it (although perhaps wiser if you made the money yourself.) You still have problems, although they might be an entirely new set of problems. On the plus side, you never have to worry about putting food on the table or paying bills, which frees you up to think about bigger things.
People will look at you differently when you are rich. The upside is they respect you more. The downside is most people will want something from you.
It’s best to not flaunt your money, but instead put it to work to make more money. Many millionaires drive beat up cars and live in perfectly average homes. Few people know they are rich and they like it that way.
Don’t buy stuff you don’t need. Rent it, borrow it or do without. And don’t carry a balance on credit cards. Ever.
Never borrow money to make discretionary purchases. Only borrow money to make money.
Start with the end in mind. If you’re starting a company, from day 1 ask yourself what to do to make your company as valuable as possible so you can one day sell it for millions.
Lastly, having money is power. Power to help any charity you choose. Power to help anybody or anyone. Power to make positive changes in your community, positively impact the lives of others and make the world a better place.
A man sets out on a journey of a lifetime. The problem is, he doesn’t know where he wants to go. So he spends the next 40 years wandering the back roads, never really going anywhere. Another man chooses his destination. It’s a promised land, far, far away. The dangers he faces along the route are great and the challenges seem almost insurmountable. Yet because he knows where he wants to go, he is able to find his way, overcome the challenges and reach his destination, where he retires in 10 years’ time.
One man didn’t know where he was going, and so he wandered for 40 years and achieved nothing.
The other man knew exactly where he wanted to go, and because of his belief and determination, he was able to overcome every obstacle and reach his destination in 10 years.
Which person are you?
Most people won’t define what they want until they have clarity on how they will get there. But because they don’t know what they want, they don’t have the clarity, and thus end up doing nothing.
That’s why you’ve got to decide first what it is that you want, and be totally clear on what that is. Write it down in detail. Only then will you figure out how to get to where you want to go.
One more thing: Once you begin your journey, take time every single day to revisit your goal.
Just like a builder continually consults the building plans, you should continually go over your goal so that your subconscious mind knows exactly what it should be doing to get you to where you want to go.
This will also help you avoid time wasting activities that you don’t need.
Advanced Tip: Measure what you treasure.
Whatever your goal might be, take daily measurements of how you’re doing.
For example, if your goal is to reach a certain income level, you’ll want to track your profits daily.
If your goal is to exercise and eat right, you’ll want to keep a journal of everything you eat and every exercise you perform.
Whatever your goal might be, measure what you treasure and you will get more of what it is that you want in life.
Before they share it, readers have to love your content. So how do you write the next viral blog post? I’ll show you…
Offer a simple, practical way of accomplishing a task. According to the New York Times, 94 percent of people share content because they believe it will be helpful to others. That’s why articles such as “10 Ways to Save Money” are popular.
Write “how to” posts. These kinds of posts are always popular and tend to stay evergreen for a long time. For example, few can resist, “How to Make the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever.”
Give them what they want. Figure out what your readers want to learn and write about that.
Use the active voice as much as possible. Instead of writing, “Donna is loved by Riche,” write “Richie loves Donna.” It’s easier, faster and more interesting to read.
Use present tense as much as possible. Instead of writing, “Last week when we were going down the mountain…” Write, “Imagine this: We’re going down the mountain when a cougar leaps in front of our motorcycle…” It puts the reader right there in the scene with you and makes it more exciting to read.
Entertain the reader. If you can delight the reader, make your content irresistible and even bring humor to it, so much the better.
Be credible. If you can back up what you write, your readers will trust your content enough to share it.
Cut the fat. It’s not the length of your content that matters, it’s the conciseness. Tighten up your sentences, rewrite anything that confuses, eliminate words like “very” and “just” and basically tighten up your writing. Every word should count.
It’s not War and Peace. Use shorter lines instead of longer sentences whenever possible.
Engage the reader emotionally. It’s not just about the facts, it’s also about grabbing the reader by the emotions and not letting them go until the end.
Tell stories. If you can illustrate your point through a story, do it.
Never, ever be boring. Have someone read your content before you post it. Ask them to watch for any place where their mind starts to wander. These are the places you’ll need to work on, so you don’t lose your reader’s attention.
If you find yourself writing in a style your English professor would adore, try again. The best tip of all to getting your content shared is to write as though you’re talking to your best friend, sharing useful stuff s/he wants to know.
What’s the easiest way to make money online, without having to create a product or a sales page? Affiliate marketing, of course. 🙂
So, why is it that most affiliate marketers never make nearly what they could make? Anyone has the potential to make HUGE money in affiliate marketing, yet 90% or more of affiliates make a pittance (I’ll wager the number is closer to 98%, in fact.)
Think about this: If you earn an average of $50 on each sale in a sales funnel you promote, and you make 6 sales, you’ve made $300. Sounds good, right?
But guaranteed, there is someone else who made 600 sales and walked away with $30,000.
Why did they make 600 sales when you made just 6?
There are reasons why a handful of affiliate marketers do amazingly well, and everyone else barely makes a profit.
And marketers who understand this will always have a tremendous advantage over marketers who don’t.
1: Build a Relationship
I know you’ve heard it before, but are you doing it? People buy people, not products.
If you want them to open your email and click your link, or visit your Facebook Group and click a link, you’ve got to have a RELATIONSHIP with your people.
This is so simple to do, yet few marketers take the time.
Start with a blog post that is all about you, and then send new opt-ins to the post so they can get to know you. Make the post silly, funny and most of all REAL. Talk about the stupid stuff you’ve done, the mistakes you’ve made, where you live and so forth.
Do you have a strange hobby or unusual taste in food? Include that. Do you have 17 pets? Talk about them. Do you work until 3 in the morning and sleep until noon? Mention that.
Reveal the real you. Not the details people don’t want, but the ones that amuse and interest. You’re looking to make a real connection, not give a resume.
And above all else, don’t make your life seem like a series of magnificent accomplishments. No one is going to relate to someone who turns everything they touch into gold.
But they are going to relate to the time you bought Bitcoin when it was worthless and sold it just before it took off, or the time you thought you could fly and jumped off your uncle’s barn into the manure pile.
And don’t stop with your ‘about me’ page, either. Use this relationship building in your lead magnet, your emails, your other blog posts and so forth.
Always inject a little bit about yourself. Not so much that you bore people, of course, or make everything seem about you. But just enough to keep it real.
Think about relating an event to a friend. Aren’t you going to give your own perceptions of what happened, as well as tell about how you got out of your car and stepped in the mud puddle just before your big presentation?
Use this same method of personal, one-on-one friend communication with your readers as well.
Post on your blog as often as possible, and we’re talking every day or two. Encourage your list to subscribe to Feedburner or the equivalent so they know when you add a new post.
Your readers will realize you’re a real person who isn’t out to pitch them a new product every 5 minutes. And they’ll gladly read your sales emails much more readily when they know there is a real live human being who is sending them these messages.
2: Use Your Own Voice
How many emails do you receive that say something along the lines of, “Buy this product – this product is the greatest product ever – you will be sorry if you miss this – so rush right over and buy it now.”
Yeah. Same old stuff, over and over again.
There is a marketer (or maybe several, but I’m thinking of one in particular) who sells MASSIVE quantities of this exact type of emails as a swipe file to new marketers.
Like a brand-new marketer couldn’t write their own 25 word email that basically says, “GO BUY THIS NOW!”
People are TIRED of getting these emails. You’re tired of getting these emails. I’m tired of getting these emails.
Same phrases, same message, same B.S.
If you’re not going to stand apart from the crowd, then you’re going to have to share the same crumbs they’re getting.
Instead, take 30 minutes and write your own promotional email in your own voice.
Forget hype. Be sincere. Be honest. “Hey, this product isn’t for everyone. I don’t even know if it’s for you. But if you have this problem, then maybe this is your solution. Check it out and decide if it’s right for you, because I know it’s worked like crazy for some people. And it’s on sale right now, too.”
I’ve written emails where I basically tell people not to buy something unless they really really want it or need it. “Don’t buy this if you already know how to do xyz.” “Don’t buy this if you’re not going to be doing this type of marketing.” This is only for people who want (fill in the blank.) It’s like I’m trying to talk them out of it, which paradoxically often results in more sales, not fewer.
But the point isn’t tricking them into buying; it’s to be honest. Because you know what? That latest, greatest product you’re promoting ISN’T what everyone on your list needs. Some of them, sure. The rest of them, no.
Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to open an email that says, “Here’s a new product, thought you might want to know, but please don’t buy it if you’re not going to use it.”
The first time I got an email like that, I bought the product without even reading the sales letter. True story. I was just so happy that someone wasn’t ramming a sale down my throat, that I jumped at the chance to buy it.
Weird but true.
My point is, be you. Be honest. Talk to your readers as though they are your best friends and you don’t want to lose your best friends by acting like a carnival barker who is here today and pulled up stakes (vanished) tomorrow with their money.
3: Email a LOT
This is the one where people like to argue with me, and I understand that.
You’ve heard over and over again that you shouldn’t email too often, or you’ll upset your subscribers, right?
After all, every time you email, there is the potential that a subscriber will hit the unsubscribe button.
Do you know what the potential is when you DON’T email? Nothing. No opens, no clicks, no sales… not even any relationship building.
Do you want people to open and read your emails? Then send out those emails EVERY DAY.
Here’s why:
First, almost no one will see every email you send out. Let’s say you’ve got a sale on one of your products. Don’t you think your readers might like to know about it? But if they miss the one and only email you send that lets them know, then they’ve missed out on the discount and you LOST a sale.
Second, send emails at different times. I opened someone’s email just yesterday, decided I was VERY interested in the new membership he was selling, clicked the link and discovered it was no longer available.
What happened? This particular marketer only sends out emails at 1:00 a.m. my time, so I don’t even see most of his emails in the avalanche of mail I get before I wake up.
Third, if you’re sending email once a week or once a month, your readers are forgetting who the heck you are. And when you finally do send an email, they think it’s spam.
Fourth, if you mail more often, you will make more money. Don’t take my word on this, just do it for one month. Send out one email per day, every day, for 30 days. Put a promotion in each one. See if you haven’t made more – a LOT more – money during that time period than during the previous month.
And by the way, I’m not saying JUST send out a promotion in each email. Make sure you have some content in there as well, even if it’s just an amusing anecdote.
4: Think of affiliate marketing as a BUSINESS
This isn’t a hobby, nor is it an add-on for an additional income stream.
Even if you go on vacation, be prepared to send out an email every day. Schedule them in advance or write them on vacation. Either way, affiliate marketing to your list is a business that you can’t just jump into when you need cash and forget about the rest of the time.
You don’t have many support issues, since the product owners handle this. You don’t have to worry about creating products, sales pages and so forth. You don’t have to drive traffic, unless it’s to build your list bigger.
With so much you don’t have to do, there’s no reason not to focus your time and energy into building relationships with your list and promoting to them every single day.
Affiliate marketing can be some of the easiest money you’ve ever made, if you put in the time and effort to make it a real business.
Hi, it’s Holly and this is my new website. Stay tuned… I’ll have great things to share!
For starters, here’s an article I think you’ll enjoy…
It’s called: “Make the Leap to Home Business Success”
If you are going to build a successful home business, you need 3 “intangibles.” These are things that must come from WITHIN you.
===> Intangible 1 <===
First, you must have a strong WHY.
Why must you make a home business work? What’s driving you? What is it that you CAN’T have in your life anymore and/or what is it that you absolutely MUST HAVE now?
For me, I couldn’t stand working 12+ hours a day anymore and missing the experience of my children growing up. I also absolutely HAD TO HAVE the freedom of being able to control my life and finances through a little box that I could carry with me anywhere in the world and not be tied to anyone’s time pressures or demands but my own. That was my carrot and my stick. I felt a great pain deep in my gut of missing out on my children’s lives and the incredible freedom that succeeding in this business would provide for me. I found my why. You MUST find yours.
===> Intangible 2 <===
You must BELIEVE that it is possible.
If you don’t believe that it’s POSSIBLE for you to succeed in a home business or make your living on the Internet, you won’t. It’s that simple.
For me, figuring out that it was possible was just a matter of realizing that many other people were ALREADY making great money with a home business online. If they could do it, I could too. It would just be a matter of figuring out what those people were doing and then adapting it to my situation.
There is no shortage of undeniable PROOF that people (millions of them) are making money online in many different ways. Just get online and do some research and you’ll find countless testimonials and stories of REAL PEOPLE making real money on the Internet. Or head to your local bookstore and you’ll find the same documented evidence of this fact. Truth is, it’s getting easier and easier to start and succeed in a home based business. This is primarily because of the Internet and affiliate marketing.
I’ve always said that “affiliate marketing” is the job of the future. In the “old” days, you had to go to a potential employer, apply for the position and hope for the best. Now you can simply go to any company you want, fill out their affiliate application and start work immediately. Affiliates are the new working class. Believe me, making money with affiliate programs or making your living on the Internet is WAY MORE than possible. It is pretty much (or will be soon enough) unavoidable now. Affiliate marketing is the “job” of the future that’s here TODAY.
===> Intangible 3 <===
You must be willing to MAKE THE LEAP.
Ready, FIRE, then aim… This is the operating philosophy you MUST adopt to succeed with an Internet home business.
That’s backwards for most people who like to aim before they fire. The fact is the Internet is a moving target… The only thing constant about it is change. You need to stop analyzing the game and simply jump into it. You can’t learn from the outside… You have to be IN THE RING to truly understand it.
The lesson here is that you will never really be READY to start a home based business. You simply have to start one. This is what I call “Making the Leap.”
The good news is that the cost of failure on the Internet is very small. In the “brick and mortar” world you need to evaluate things very carefully before you decide to open up a business. It’s almost always necessary to invest thousands of dollars to get an offline business off the ground. However, on the Internet you can often start a successful business for less than $100. In fact, Plug-In Profit Site is a really good example of this.
You simply need get IN THE GAME… Each moment that you stay “out there,” you’re wasting valuable time that you could be learning and skills necessary to become a successful affiliate marketer. In fact, if you’re not in the game yet, you’re ALREADY behind the times. Come on… You can do it! Make the leap to becoming a successful home based business owner today!
About the author:Stone Evans was a washed up restaurant worker desperately searching for a way to save his family when he discovered the internet and affiliate marketing… 24 months later he finally cracked the code and started earning over $10,000 per month. Now the same system that saved him is available to you here >>
