Today's Sponsor: Profit Dashboard (Make Money on Fiverr course) "You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks." -- Winston Churchill The Steps Phase 1: day job (get some income rolling in, overlap skills with your internet business if possible, find the win-win scenario) Phase 2: freelancing (small jobs, don't become a monthly employee, get good at just one hour per day, avoid scope creep) Phase 3: information products (solutions to real problems, find the sweet spot between power, simplicity, and speed) Phase 4: membership sites & passive income (use the untapped potential of your list, 2 week mini-launch & pitch webinar, keep piling in a batch of members) List, Traffic, and Offers list: prospects and buyers (email autoresponder, opt-in page, follow-up sequence) traffic: bigger community than yours, joint ventures, SEO (blog posts, guest posts, YouTube videos, podcasts), PPC (retargeting, AdWords, Facebook, Bing) offers: affiliate products, resale rights, $7 solutions, $197-$497 four-part membership course, $2000/month coaching program time management: four daily tasks, wake up one hour earlier, leave the computer when you're done Fiverr Income (ProfitDashboard.com) goal: one hour, 1 dollar per minute, 10 repeat clients ranking: deliver fast (easy if you enjoy what you're doing), leave feedback, tweak gig description, get ratings process: wake up to orders (knock out audios, videos, written material, software reports), tweak those numbers to grow and avoid a slump, upsell and scale (i.e. charge higher rates for the same time/effort)

Today's Sponsor: ProfitDashboard.com "Learning is a gift, even when pain is your teacher." -- Maya Watson You should be excited to get out of bed in the morning. You should be itching to knock out 40 minutes of money-making tasks on the computer, then leave the computer. If you're feeling unmotivated, get off the computer until you do. THE LONG GAME 1. Treat your business like a real business: boundaries for "focused" time (Four Daily Tasks) -- no split focus 2. Anytime you're making a decision or deciding to commit time to a task, ask yourself: will doing this really earn me more money? If you're not sure, then is it worth risking an hour or 5 minutes to find out? (Usually: yes.) 3. Look to put yourself out of business, because if you won't, someone else will. (Which means: move your business to the next logical step.) Complete what you start, but after completing and getting the low hanging fruit, don't rely on that income stream to keep paying you for 10 years. SETBACKS 4. Support System & Mastermind: have someone to talk to who understands you 5. Light at the end of the tunnel: don't plan more than your next product, next book, next three podcast episodes, etc. Go back and connect the dots later. 6. Make Money: you'll be more excited (and have an easier time justifying what you're doing to others) if you're making some initial money MINDSET 7. Take Time Off the Computer to Think: Either weekends, or specific days of the week. Don't just "zone out" all day and all week staring at the screen. Take quiet walks or drives to think, too. Exercise to clear your head and reduce stress. 8. Be an Above-Average Person: Actually listen to what people say in your everyday life. Avoid being the zombie who drifts through things. Don't watch so much of the news, and avoid live TV if possible. Quit gossip and complaining. You take actions, things don't happen to you. 9. Have an Abundance Mindset: Provide lots of help for free to others, not to feel superior or to get credit, just because it makes you feel good. ACTIONS 10. Traffic: most people setup their site hoping everyone will find it. WSO's, seminars, viral affiliate program, retargeted traffic -- get lots of people to your site 11. Strengthen Your Content Muscle: this doesn't necessary mean writing. It can be webinars, podcasts, YouTube videos, product creation. Get used to producing "something" helpful to others at least every few days -- paid or free. Note: build content on sites you control, not forums and Facebook. 12. Minimum viable product: What's most important is that you take action, that it leads you to making more money, and that you complete and follow-through. Getting it "done" and 80% right is better than getting it perfect and 100% right, which is impossible.

"Be big enough to admit your mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them." -- John C Maxwell Traps you fall into: perfectionist, self doubt, self defeatist, the stars have to align. I need to "force" myself into getting motivated. Yeah, right. "Usual" advice I'll skip over: Four Daily Tasks + Camtasia babysitter + accountability partner + computer hotseat + one take content Usually, the "thing" you have to do is just 5 minutes, or just 1 hour: speak out book, run webinar, send email Stop multitasking with the phone, email, Facebook, TV. Leave it out of the room. Stop watching TV: biggest time waster (or at least put it off for a couple weeks) Schedule time on the calendar to get it done Throw away the old notes and papers, you don't need that clogging up your mind Don't walk into the office after a specific hour: this forces you to get more done Anchoring: associate your office, sitting at the computer with fun, creativity, productivity, flow state (leave windows open so you can sit down and go) Take short breaks without the phone: it'll be easier to multitask when you get back (take up walking during your breaks if you can) Spend just 5 minutes doing something you love like playing the piano Read a lot more: just one page per night Leisure goals: running a certain distance, scoring high at a certain sport (create something). Enjoy the "fun" of building your business. The meaning is what you make it. Get to the making-money phase and get to stoppable/resumable milestones. Bonus: Wake up one hour early for an "easy" boost to the day.

Important Quotes & Terms Jeff Bezos: "Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time." Lao Tzu: "The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step" T. Harv Eker: one foot on the brake Grant Cardone: you must put 10X the amount of effort you think you had to put in to create that goal Resources: positive affirmations about money Resources: Socratic questions to change limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs Reasons We Became Entrepreneurs Result: travel, retire, better house/car More time for what matters Break out of the daily grind Freedom Control Less stress, work Build something undeniably great with your name on it Crack the code (or nut) using your intelligence Help others to build their business, write a book, lose weight, etc. Change lives. Get the high score Reasons You're Trapped in That Money Zone self-esteem (you think you're not smart enough or don't deserve it), too old or too young, fear of change, fear of losing friends, comparisons to your parents and friends scarcity mindset insetad of an abundance mindset it's hard to speed towards a brick wall: you tend to slow down when those bills get paid, instead you need 10 problem: what we resist persists Quick & Easy Solutions Meanings don't exist: any meanings or conclusions you come up with are in your own head. There is no absolute truth. Only many truths you have created. Locate the source: Write down the specific issues that are holding you back from making more money -- people, attitude, obligations Counter example: Find the exception that proves the rule: when were you productive? When did you have more money than you needed at the time? Provide real value for others Cut out the negative people (and customers) in your life Write down a daily metric for how you're doing (as in, money, sales, content created) Write down issues to correct them Socratic Questions Clarification: why do you say that? Assumption: what could we assume instead? Evidence: what's an example? Perspective: what would be an alternative? Consequences: how does it affect other things? Meaning: what does it mean and where does it come from? Questions to Correct Mistaken Beliefs What's the evidence for this? Does this ALWAYS hold true or has it ever been wrong? Does this take the big picture into account, both positive and negative? Are you being fully objective? Where did this idea come from? Or is it only emotional? Negative Self Talk Worrier: anxiety. Worst case scenario, overestimate the bad, exaggerated images of that. What if? Change to: so what? Critic: self esteem. Judging. Ignores positive qualities and emphasizes the bad. I'm ok with the way I am. Victim: depression. Helpless, powerless, regret. Belief that nothing will change or is too difficult. One step at a time. Perfectionist: burnout. Says you should be working harder. Intolerant of mistakes and setbacks. It's ok to make mistakes.

If you do the things you've always done, you'll get the results you've always gotten. Questions must be answered. Ask your "computer" brain for more negative answers and it will provide this to you. Ask for positive things and it also can't stop. "Destroy Overwhelm" FREE Report Important Quotes "You either create or allow everything that happens to you." -- Jack Canfield "Today may not seem like much, but you're trading a day of your life for it." -- Anonymous Questions As We Get Started Take stock of what matters and what doesn't. What can you let go? What is your usual reaction to: your bank account, your significant other, bad news, good news. What can you change? Do you work better under pressure (just enough chaos) or do you like getting further and further ahead? Do you have some skin in the game or are you just a spectator? Psychological Triggers to Become Instantly Productive Even in Overwhelm countdown timer (creates artificial urgency) Seinfeld technique (mark each day on the calendar when you complete something and don't break the chain) accountability partner (someone who can be proud of you when you finish) Resources Four Basic Emotions: happy, sad, afraid/surprised, angry/disgusted Plutchik Wheel of Emotion: joy, (love), trust, (submission), fear, (alarm), surprise, (disapproval / disappointment), sadness, (remorse), disgust, (contempt), anger, (aggression), anticipation (optimism) The "Feel Wheel" (Plutchik Wheel on Crack to identify an exact emotion) Combinations of the Plutchik Wheel Abraham-Hicks Model: joy, passion, enthusiasm, belief, optimism, hopefulness, contentment -- boredom, pessimism, frustration, overwhelm, disappointment, doubt, worry, blame, discouragement, anger, revenge, hatred, jealousy, insecurity, fear Tony Robbins' Six Human Needs: certainty, uncertainty, significance, love, growth, contribution Robbins' Classes of Experiences: feels good, good for you, good for others, serves the greater good. Transform Class 2 experiences into Class 1 experiences. Throw away Class 3 and Class 4 100 ways to say "great" 7 responses for common negative thoughts from Wayne Dyer Solutions to Overwhelm Helpless: Get some control back by making your bed. It's at least one thing you can control and one accomplishment you made today Disorganized: Four Daily Tasks: write down those quick goals. Break your problem down into component parts. Alarmed: Play it out to the logical conclusion. As in, if you're worried about money, take it to the most extreme conclusion. Will you be homeless? No, then it's not super terrible. Anxious: Exercise (even walking), eat better, move around, have better posture Indifferent/Unmotivated: Journal what you're feeling: sounds cheesy and is time consuming but works as a makeshift therapist. Combine something you don't like to do with what you do like to do, like play music while writing. Lonely: Be more social, find a mastermind or mentor Annoyed & Negative: Redirect Automatic Negative Thoughts and Absolutes ("this always happens"). Ask yourself, what's good about this or what could be good about this? Depressed: smile, laugh, change your usual "predictable" reaction. Confuse your mind and break out of that pattern. Be careful with the "negative" words you use. Bored: Move to a new location. Get your writing done in a coffee shop today, with a laptop and no charger Distracted: shut out noise and create boundaries. Develop better habits, i.e. not checking FB, stats, email when you get bored. Separate the forest from the trees to get that clarity. Conclusion: which is the reason you feel overwhelmed? a. you perform best under pressure (you need a way to relax and unplug but this mode works for you): tweak those deadlines so it's interesting but you deliver on time b. you're worried of what others think: do your best, you do you. You need more confidence which you get as feedback from your victories. c.

"The worst people to serve are the poor people. Give them free, they think it's a trap. Tell them it's a small investment, they'll say can't earn much. Tell them to come in big, they'll say no money. Tell them try new things, they'll say no experience. Tell them it's traditional business, they'll say hard to do. Tell them it's a new business model, they'll say it's MLM. Tell them to run a shop, they'll say no freedom. Tell them run new business, they'll say no expertise. Just ask them, what can they do? They won’t be able to answer you. Poor people fail because of one common behavior: Their Whole Life is About Waiting." -- Jack Ma "The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails." -- John Maxwell Thought #1: Wealth is a choice: make up your mind. If money was distributed equally, it would be back in the "old" hands within 90 days Thought #2: Stop fooling yourself about what you're after. Peace of mind, being able to do good in the world, is easier with money Thought #3: Realize that you're the one holding yourself back, but don't be "happily miserable" about it Factor #1: Relationships Mastermind: associate with successful people (who challenge you) and not miserable people Gossip, jealousy, nastiness. It's easy to be a critic. Why not do something if it's so easy? Do a nice thing because it makes you feel good, before you need help, not just to use people Be 100% there: don't try to "balance" business, family, day job, and fun Factor #2: Abundance Mindset (skeptical vs. trusting) Avoid the transactional trap where you either do something and expect a favor, or you play chicken to see who can do the least "work" "Don't buy any courses... why would they give away their secret sauce?" Zero sum: I'll have to steal money or sucker someone into working for me to make money Factor #3: Take Control of Your Own Destiny (enjoy problems instead of placing the blame or making excuses) Self-sabotage: one foot on the brake, the wrong kind of control, leads to "misery loves company" and trying to "save" others Be coachable: Make some mistakes, or go into coaching with "what I've already built and here's where I'm stuck" as opposed to "I don't know where to start." Instead of a long-winded sob story, get to the point and tell me the one area where you need help. Limiting beliefs, confirmation bias, self fulfilling prophecy, shooting yourself in the foot vs. The Four Minute Mile & The Mastermind Find a way to enjoy building websites and making money Minimum viable product and proof of concept: complete something so that you can contribute value Let go of what doesn't matter Factor #4: Time Management Appointment Based Business: I have enough questions answered that I can now act (the calendar is immovable) Anchoring: you become what you focus on, and your daily "time system" is only effective if you take it seriously Train your brain. For example, set a timer for 10 minutes, start writing, and don't stop writing. The instant the timer stops, leave the computer. Don't act like you're smarter than the system. Don't just shrug it off and say "I got it." Journaling, meditations, affirmations, daily actions & habits Factor #5: Learning, Curiosity & Simplicity (lottery vs. action) Crack the code: get to the goal in the least number of steps and make it repeatable Specialized knowledge vs. "hard work" Intake of information to solve a real problem instead of watching reality TV Repetitions to improve your skill and repeat the positive result Failure is a learning experience and the chance to begin again or change course, but don't give up too soon or set yourself up for disappointment Don't ignore the simple or familiar stuff. Don't get caught up in buzzwords that make it more difficult. Avoid professor or student mode Factor #6: Money Management Emotional vs. logical Gambling vs. saving Live below your means

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." -- Steve Jobs "A real decision is meausred by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided." -- Tony Robbins Criteria for updating a course you're selling: Has it be at least 1 year since I launched this? Is it still selling, or have sales dropped off slightly? (as I'm promoting it heavily?) Is there something new I'd change in each module of this course? Is there a new sexy hook I can add to justify this new course? (examples: transcripts for videos, tools/templates, coaching calls using TimeTrade) Tune in to today's Robert Plank Show where we talk about taking action and how to decide between the "product launch frenzy" versus income streams that make you money for years to come...

"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it. -- Bill Gates Remember Four Daily Tasks? No matter how crazy or "complicated" you try to make your productivity and time management, this is what always keeps me productive: 10 minute early morning, 40 minute morning, 40 minute early afternoon, 40 minute afternoon three day window: forget about the 100 item to-do list or 4-week plan. What's this week? degrees of doneness: no chipping away, starting, continuing. What did you finish? accountability & encryption: list out the acronyms of what you're going to do distractions: don't check your phone, email, Twitter, or the news (it will find you) Principle #1: Complete For Now / Minimum Viable Product Keep it simple. Don't fool yourself into thinking complicated is better, or 100x half finished things are better than 1 finished thing (don't replicate the mistakes) -- get the bugs out Abundance mindset: there's enough room for everybody. A rising tide lifts all boats. Continuous learning, childlike curiosity The Kid Test / The Mom Test: Can you describe what you're doing (list building, FB fan pages, Amazon FBA, etc.) to a five-year old? It's okay to spend way more time taking action than spending time thinking Principle #2: Publish 100 Actions 100 blog posts, 100 YouTube videos, 100 Kindle books, 100 podcast episodes (but COMPLETE one at a time) 100 Days: Give it at least 3 months (100 days) of consistent daily action (and make some progress every day) Make some money as fast as possible as encouragement for you to keep going Appointment based business If you don't have your own system & schedule, everyone will pull you in all directions. Don't plan it out ahead of time, but "put out" 100 things Completion (day 1 isn't when you start learning, it's when your first "thing" is published) Repetitions. Fail forward fast. Do what most people won't do. You can't learn to drive by reading the owner's manual 1000 times. Have a morning routine to get a jump on the day and do what matters before things distract you Principle #3: The Light at the End of the Tunnel Know exactly what you're building towards (i.e. 20 sales a day, 5k/month Fiverr income) Implement and experiment. Don't learn just to learn, re-teach or criticize. Focus on just one thing at a time. Improve just one variable. Principle #4: Data Scientist Track your efforts and results in a spreadsheet Marketplace Need: Create blog posts, videos, podcasts, products, courses that deliver on what people are asking for Crack the code: make all the mistakes, correct them, streamline that checklist (remove instead of add), stop doing what isn't working Track it: You're fooling yourself into think you're doing so much Principle #5: Computer Programmer Mentality break the problem down into manageable sub-problems or milestones. It's ok to admit you don't know. Find out what you need to know! Some questions have no answer, or just aren't important. Don't look for so many questions. Find "a" path to get where you need to go. Principle #6: Rough Numbers Know your rough numbers (this is how 4DT came out, number of help desk tickets answered, clicks from emails, webinar attendees) Embrace the Chaos: you need some degree of "messiness" in your business. JVZoo, RAP, multiple membership sites instead of one Separate the forest from the trees Principle #7: Get a Coach Admit when you don't know something: don't "juggle" it all in your head See what someone more successful than you is doing. Know what the "next" problem is that you're solving. Know how to ask a real question. Role Modeling & Anti Role Modeling: what would X do in this situation? and what would this unsuccessful person say about this? Pitfalls to Stay Away From Don't go down the rabbit hole: learning to program when you just wanted to create an e-book

Quote of the Week: "Even the sharpest of knives cannot cut if held the wrong way." -- Rachel Wolchin Catchphrase of the Week: "Don't hit the baseball, hit through the baseball." Some people on my Little League team even tried "throwing" the bat at the baseball to "save time getting on base." Guess how well that worked out? Thought of the Week: You need to have enough judgement to know when to be the "drone employee" (follow the steps exactly) and when to be the creative CEO (remove steps or experiment) Seven Motivational Strategies Strategy #1: Four Daily Tasks & Accountability Group: four business related measurable tasks you COMPLETE, and not CONTINUE. Strategy #2: Deadline & Three-Day Window Strategy #3: Minimum Viable Product: what if you had to stop today? (absolute focus on one goal, milestones, and use early profits as motivation to keep going) -- avoid "fake it till you make it" Strategy #4: Do It Better Than "That Idiot Who Doesn't Deserve It" (common enemy) Strategy #5: What's In It For Me (help others with real solutions instead of talking about yourself) Strategy #6: Teach Your Notes, Criteria, Checklists, and Templates (product, membership site, book, blog, podcast) Strategy #7: Don't Compare Your Insides to Their Outsides (keep your own side of the street clean when it comes to: haters, competitors, customers) -- mind your own business, you don't know what happens behind closed doors, what and what "they" are going through. People don't care about your mistakes as much as you think. How do I know? Write down today's date, but 5 years ago. Then try to remember someone you know who embarrassed themselves 5 years ago today. You can't think of one. People won't remember your mistakes or embarrassments either. Bonus: Think about the benefits instead of the difficulties. (i.e. that new car you'll buy instead of your hourly rate)

Dave Koziel from PublishWithDave.com is going to tell us how he makes $10,000 to $30,000 per month from Amazon Kindle. He's created 60 to 80 Kindle books (6,000 to 12,000 words in length) for $80-$150. Right Click to Save: "Publish with Kindle" FREE Report (Robert Plank & Dave Koziel) Some books produce hundreds per month while even the "duds" generate $20-$25 per month. He's going to share not only his numbers and "ah-ha" moments, but his secret strategies for making money with Amazon Kindle publishing. (As well as CreateSpace physical books and ACX Audible audiobooks.) Topics covered: How to make money with Amazon Kindle without writing any of your own books (Dave only wrote two of his own books, for fun) How even an underforming book (6,000 to 12,000 words in length) makes Dave about $25 per month and can make as many as hundreds of dollars per month (so how many books like these would you outsource?) The secret to getting Amazon buyers off Amazon and onto your list How to get started with that first Kindle book Get more reviews from your Amazon books using review swaps The next level of Amazon publishing

Ever wonder what those successful internet marketers do all day? Probably less than you, and that's why they make more money. Let's talk about how to "work" smarter (and not harder) to do more in less time, just like the "big guys" do... Catchphrase of the Week: make your own luck Quote of the Week: "Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction." -- Harry S Truman Marketer of the Week: Mark Hess (give your buyers exactly what they want, understand what leads them to buy from you, race to the inbox) How to Be Happier, More Organized, and More Productive Thought #1: What's Good About This? Thought #2: Be Desperate to Reduce Clutter Thought #3: Because I Can (silence the haters) Try things out of curiosity to see what response I get. If I repeat those things, then they worked! Watch that too. A Day in the Life of Robert Plank morning routine? send a quick email every day meditation? reading? time management: don't check email in the morning, don't multitask, get everything done before the afternoon appointment based business Four Daily Tasks Income Machine help desk, checklist, system send an email every day or build up your list to the point where sending an email is worthwhile.

Let's talk today about "business card" books to build your business. You should get your best ideas down, and re-use (even sometimes repeating yourself) your best content, especially in the form of digital and physical books. Amazon lets you publish an unlimited number books, so you might as well make the most of it. Marketer of the Week: Jeff Mills (be the salesman -- best salesman for an app creator but he didn't even make the product) Quote of the Week: "When you focus on problems, you'll have more problems. When you focus on possibilities, you'll have more opportunities." -- Unknown Catchphrase of the week: "Don't live life with one foot on the brake." Comfort zone, money zone. Nobody likes a backseat driver. Thought of the week: What if you just put 10 minutes a day into that goal? Put aside $10 a day to build your business? Read just 1 page from a book per day? Is There a Book in You? Check out Robert's Amazon AuthorCentral page. Book of your best blog posts (rate them to narrow down the best ones) Interview book (get yourself out there and get a handle on scheduling) Big idea book: things that don't fit into a paid course but are also too valuable to just give away Get the catchphrase or sound byte out there so you can say you said it first Here Are My Seven Books That I Use as a Business Card List book: 100 Time Savers Interview book: Secret Conversations with Internet Millionaires Strategy book: Double Agent Marketing Concept book: Membership Cube Webinar book: Sell with Amazon FBA Tutorial book: Setup a Point & Click Website Year-end book: Internet Marketing on Crack You can (and should) join our Make a Product book publishing course to discover how to publish your own book in 58 minutes.

Catchphrase of the Week: See a movie or go to the park. Quote of the Week: "The number one reason why people give up so fast is because they tend to look at how far they still have to go, instead of how far they have gotten." - Unknown Marketer of the Week: Gary Ambrose (show someone how to "make a million dollars in five minutes" -- his membership hosting platform includes pre-made membership content, sales letters, emails, just click and it's in) Seven Passive Income Business Models 1. Fiverr services (Profit Dashboard) 2. Tiny little $7 reports: it's all about the upsell (Income Machine) 3. Low-ticket webinar: fake out and drop the price down to $7. Anything to get them buying. (Webinar Crusher) 4. Platinum coaching program: seminar, application, recurring GoToWebinar. (Membership Cube) 5. Yearly software: license table, updates, developer license, lifetime access. (This is how we sell and market Backup Creator). 6. Webinar membership sites: 4 or 8 week class, fixed term site, deactivatable software, checklist, pain of disconnect like a directory. (You can use the WP Notepad and WP Kunaki plugins for this, included for free in Membership Cube.) 7. $2400/mo Websites for Offline Businesses (we don't have a training for this but we use Backup Creator to re-use our template.) 8. Kindle books: (Make a Product is our Amazon publishing course.)

Question of the Week: what's your hook? Catchphrase of the week: Teach long division, sell the calculator Quote of the Week: "Don't make the mistake of doing nothing, just because you can't do everything." -- Unknown Marketer of the Week: Jordan Hall (do you have an all-in-one solution?) Let me share my podcasting formula with you: 5-10 minutes of a problem, 5-10 minutes of a solution, and 5-10 minutes of a case study implementing that solution to the previously stated problem... Segment 1: Problem Content marketing traffic (also transcript and book) Fleshing out ideas Stay in the mind of the prospect Segment 2: Solution Soft sell (URL dropping) Content muscle Presentation muscle Segment 3: Case Study Equipment: Logitech ClearChat, GoldWave, tagging, LibSyn, PowerPress The (your name) Show: 5 minute episode, then artwork/music, then longer form content, interviews, more free-form iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, podcast directories, seed traffic from list This episode's sponsor: Podcast Crusher. Get a podcast up and running today.

Let's talk about "The Grid" you'll have in your membership site: What if you taught weight loss? Give me a 5x5 table (or dashboard) where I can choose the meal plan I want to lose weight. Hypnosis membership site? Let me jump to the exact recording I want to listen to in order to feel good, fall asleep, get focused, etc. Let me choose the exact real estate form in your real estate membership site. Catchphrase of the Week: When you copy the airplane for the first time, duplicate the dents, too. Question of the Week: What's the One Word That You Own? Drip, clone. Template. Quote of the Week: "No focus = overwhelm." -- Dan Blank Marketer of the Week: Joe Lavery (put the pressure on your website visitors using scarcity) Our Membership Cube course shows you how to setup WordPress, a domain name, sales letter, and use Wishlist Member as the "gatekeeper" to manage all your members: let them in once they pay, or kick them out if they cancel/refund. WP Notepad to provide note-taking areas allow members to take private notes under each of your videos each of your modules add "completed" checkboxes in every page/post so they can mark off their progress add "fill in the blank" forms so they can grab your templates and customize them right in their browser add multiple "checkboxes" anywhere in your site so people can complete the tasks you provide to them also, spy on those members to see how they're using your site WP Kunaki to collect addresses collect mailing adresses (to dump into DoubleAgentCards, Kunaki, send a book or podcast) verify those addresses against a verifying service create public or private member directories TablePress to create the dashboard (free plugin) figure out what size of table you want (rows and columns) add links to the modules of your site rearrange later: add/remove rows or columns, add icons from IconFinder.com This is all possible due to Membership Cube, which includes your own copy of Wishlist Member, WP Notepad, WP Kunaki, and more.

Today we're talking about a silly way of making money using Fiverr. Our course for this is at Profit Dashboard. Everyone can do this. Even if you're bored, goofing around, looking for startup money, or starting a business that someone else can continue. "Make Money from Fiverr" FREE Report Like the Robert Plank Show on Facebook Robert Plank's Catchphrases of the Week Phrase #1: Don't Think So Much. (start doing) Phrase #2: Think about what you'd do if you were desperate for money. Then do some version of that (on a smaller scale) so you don't actually have to become desperate. Quote of the Week from Revolutionary War Colonel William Prescott: "An obstacle is often a stepping stone." Marketer of the Week: Daniel Hall from DanielHallPresents.com. Have a whole year of webinars booked. Book 2-3 different webinar swaps with someone if the first one works well. First, make the money ($100). Then, scale it to make more money ($1000). Then, scale back the time so it doesn't take over your life ($100-$1000/hour)... Today, think about living life on your terms: where no one tells you what to do, and you can do what you want. Run your own blog, webinars, podcasts, events, publish your books. Do what you want, but do something! Stop thinking. Better Time Management (Four Daily Tasks) What if you provided a coaching bonus when someone buys from you? (even for $17 or $97) -- TimeTrade.com What if you send a personal postcard to people who bought, or even attended your webinars? -- WPKunaki.com and DoubleAgentCards.com What if you asked QUESTIONS from your email subscribers? Most marketers don't know to do this. Appointment-Based Business: Could you run your entire internet business in just 1 hour a day? You probably could, if you got off Facebook, emails, customer support. Guess what? You still have that time. It just shouldn't be "business time." You might need a day planner or a calendar. Fiverr: A Silly But Effective Repeatable Income Fiverr Marketplace: people buy things for $5, usually more with upsells, multiple "gigs", fast delivery Based on ratings and rankings so it's not a sketchy marketplace like DigitalPoint, Craigslist, or even Upwork Voiceovers, videos, run SEO software, transcriptions, article writing The Steps Join ProfitDashboard.com so we can show you how to navigate Fiverr. Choose a micro-niche (i.e. handing out flyers) Post your "gig" (or job) and choose your pricing (i.e. $5 for 50 flyers or 100 word voiceover) Take steps to get traffic to your gig (this is unique to Profit Dashboard) Check your orders, complete them in a few minutes, and deliver them Get rated and rate your buyers -- rise in the rankings Closing Thoughts: Small Increments What if you read just 1 page of a book per day? (minimum) What if you earned or saved an extra $100 per day? ($3k/mo = $36k/year = $720k in 20 years, even before compound interest) What if you put in an extra 10 minutes into your business every morning? 5 hours per month or 60 hours per year Most people bastardize "Think & Grow Rich" because they forget about FOCUS. Most marketers talk themselves out of taking any action because they're already "imagined" themselves doing it. Stop thinking. Just do. You can course correct later. Today's episode sponsored by: ProfitDashboard.com.

Can a single penny really make or break your entire online business? Listen on to find out... Marketer of the week: Teresa King. She Taught me how to keep it simple. One of the first people I knew with a membership site (1999) -- BoxedScripts with me. Redirect Pro. Feature Presentation: The Penny Test Does your business pass these three tests? Penny Test (what happens if you set your product's price to 0.01, actually purchase for real, then change the price back to normal later? Can you completely pay, check out, and create an account in your system? What about logging back in?) Login Test (upsell, test user, MG user masquerading, dashboard page, login-logout) Opt-in Test (single-double-triple optin, re-optin with existing address) fill in contact form) Ten Bonus Tests 1. Is your mailing address on your website? 2. What about a contact form? 3. What do I see when I google your name? 4. Search your name on Amazon? 5. Search on YouTube? 6. Search on iTunes? 7. Do you own the .com? 8. Where can I optin on your site? 9. What can I buy? 10. If I only buy one thing from you, what should I buy? Bonus test: where's the one place that I can find your "best stuff"? (best of page on your blog, blog post listing all your products, etc.) Wise Words: John C. Maxwell's 7 Steps to Success John C. Maxwell, author of 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, says you need to take these seven actions: Make a commitment to grow daily Value the process more than events Don't wait for inspiration Be willing to sacrifice please for opportunity Dream big Plan your priorities Give up to go up

If you feel like there are holes in your internet marketing knowledge, that maybe you're trying to learn college calculus but can't add two plus two, then this is the podcast episode for you! Many marketers are obsessed with split testing, funnels, and setting up 1-click upsells, but they don't even have a buy button on a sales page. Can I walk you through what I tell someone if they're struggling, can't get a sales page figured out, and just need a quick web page online? The first thing is that you should have a copy of Paper Template (just $7 dollars) installed on WordPress, because you can easily click and create anything you want. But now what do you write on that web page where you want people to enter their email to subscribe? What magic words do you place on a web page where you want people to click and pay you money? Marketer of the Week: Robert Puddy I created a couple of products and launched a couple of services with Robert Puddy back in the day. His big thing then was creating traffic exchanges to bring in lots and lots of hungry traffic. His biggest site is Launch Formula Marketing (now Login Frequency Marketing). Puddy monetizes unsubscribes from his list (link them to SpamAssassin with your affiliate link), even lost password pagees (Roboform). Make them login to your site every day, for example, to watch a webinar. Wise Words This Week When we get overwhelmed, we often use multitasking to get back on track. It often causes more problems than it solves. Usually when you split your attention, you’re giving half the effort and producing half the results. The solution is to develop "single-handling" activities. --- S.J. Scott Copywriting Shortcut AIDA/WWHW: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Why, What, How-To, What-If. Keep it stoppable stupid, look with fresh eyes, bottlenecks Who Else Wants To... (this headline is my squeeze page starter) Imagine... (starter for emails) What Would Happen If... (starter for webinars) Quick Question... (starter for sales letters) PHASE I: Minimum Viable Product Headline: Who Else Wants To? Ten bullet points: why should I get this? Price and buy button WWHW re-ordering PHASE II: Fundamentals Button, stack, headline (in that order) Product breakdown (individual modules) Problem agitate solve (story) Four objections (no need, I don't believe you) PHASE III: Persuasion Four stages of awareness Cialdini 6 elements Typos and numbers not adding up PHASE IV: Window Dressing Case studies and testimonials Graphics Jump links Resources Paper Template (This is the WordPress plugin I use on all my sites for sales letters, optin pages, webinar replay pages, and more.) Fast Food Copywriting (Here's how I churn out attention-grabbing, high-converting sales pages in just a few minutes on-demand.) Speed Copy (The complete course on how to make a full-time income with money-making web pages)

Maybe you're bored in your internet business right now because there's no real risk, challenge, or excitement in your business? This especially happens if you fall into the trap of "lying" because nothing is real. Let's get you creative so you can think your way out of your current predicament (even if that problem is boredom)... Creativity doesn't only mean "get a bunch of ideas." Notice how the word "create" is in it? Creativity = to create. Make something new and valuable. Idea or invention. Why slow down? If you're on a roll, keep going, so during slow times when you're tired, your past self (on a timer) is like an extra employee you don't have to pay. Four minute mile: 100 article days, book in an afternoon, class in an afternoon, airport product. $2k product twice a week. Hack a 100k income, how many products to sell to achieve that goal. $1000 per hour income (webinars). 1 hour per week full time income (Amazon). 1 hour per day income (Fiverr). Think your way out of a situation. Albert Einstein made creative breakthroughs by asking interesting questions, such as: what would it be like to ride a wave of light? Distill the noise down: do you take 20 pages of notes at a seminar/webinar or 5 bullet points / key takeaways? Separate the forest from the trees! Getting so bogged down by the details you don't see the big picture, end goal, reason why, do's and dont's. Presentation on 187 types of content? A mile wide and an inch deep. Solve some problems instead. Good for pitching/presenting, bad for a product. Our Marketer of the week is Ken Evoy from "Make Your Price Sell." He was the first marketer I've seen with a dynamic price. For example, you sell a product where the price increases by 1 penny every minute. Let's break the stages of you unlocking your creativity and solving any problem into four steps: WHY (reframe), WHAT (mindmap), HOW (insight), and WHAT-IF (creative flow): Step A: WHY Reframe (change the interpretation) Hit the problem from multiple angles with probing questions. Questions must be answered! Here's what you need to ask from yourself: A1: What's the big problem? What happens without this solution? (common enemy) A2: What am I solving? (specific goal) A3: What's the current way to solve it? A4: Why is my solution better? Who am I solving it for? Why does this even matter? What can I learn from this? What's funny about this? How do I start this? What do I do after this? During this stage, our goal is childlike curiosity (kids ask lots of questions but adults are set in their ways). We want to limit perfectionism and take up exercise such as free-writing. Apply random words to your situation. Think of as many "C" words as possible, for instance. Criticizing in this stage is only good if you ask: how could I have done better? You need to think up good possibilities and ideas to shoot down later. Step B: WHAT Mindmap (branch out) Get the structure, outline, manipulation, trimming, and the sequence. B1: Brain dump sub-problems. B2: Get it dialed in: Diverge (go big, seek out) vs. Converge (decide, connect, guidelines, reduce). Combine, split, add, remove, edit B3: Professor Elliot Eisner: boundary pushing (rules are constraining, let's bend them), inventing (useful combinations), boundary breaking (least common: opposite thinking, gap filling, the rules themselves are the problem), aesthetic organizing (order from chaos: most common) Boundary pushing: can we shave one second off this plugin? Remove one step from the process Boundary breaking: we host this software for them. Aesthetic organizing: for example, in every 10-episode chunk of my podcast, I'll plan on having one episode about WordPress, a case study episode, a product pitch, mindset episode, marketing, writing, and so on. Inventing: A or B eye doctor test: does it work better as "A" or work better as "B"? Step C: HOW Insight (Professor Arne Dietrich Creativity Matrix)

  Are your goals S.M.A.R.T. goals? Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Tune into today's program to uncover the tried and true techniques (16 total) to keep yourself motivated, focused, out of the procrastination zoned and focused on getting it all done and achieving that goal: Our marketer of the week is Jim Edwards from TheNetReporter. My biggest takeaway from him: just point and shoot PowerPoint for your video. It doesn't need to have quick cuts, fancy edits or be professionally done -- at all. General Motivation Four Daily Tasks: Business-Building, Deliverable (no degrees of doneness, no chipping away, no to-do lists) Seinfeld calendar (do something small every day so the cycle isn't broken) + 5 day sprint Formula and checklist: for example, 3 part podcasts and "research heavy" blog posts: 100 solutions, group into 4-5 categories and whittle down so it's all meat and no grissle, which leads us to... Reduce and rearrange the raw materials -- SIMPLE mindmapping with FreeMind helps with this. Absolute Focus Dual monitors: left for viewing, right for creating Remove: distractions, phone, social media, email, TV, news Clear the clutter: delete temporary EverNote notes and delete after you've made the blog post or product. Clear off desktop items at the end of the month. Quick calendar reminders later in the week to "check on" things and then delete. Micro-projects: start on Monday, end on Friday or Saturday. You can restart on Monday, but don't leave things open-ended. (Optimistically pessimistic.) Procrastination What quick 10 minute activity have you been putting off? Do it now. Accountability partner. Call every hour if you have a really bad "problem." Shut down distractions. Close tabs, uninstall Facebook. Change the pattern. Commit. Don't ask yourself how you "feel" about it. It's a must. Concentration What are the top 3 things to focus on? Avoid going an inch deep and a mile wide. Meditation (meaning silence and reflectiveness). A state change is as good as rest. Appointment based business: webinars, meetings, Google calendar, TimeTrade coaching calls. Wise Words to Live By Three simple rules in life: 1. If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. 2. If you don't ask, the answer will always be no. 3. If you don't step forward, you'll always be in the same place. What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. -- Oscar Wilde You may think the grass is greener on the other side, but if you take the time to water your own grass, it would be just as green. Philosopher Karl Popper: True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it. Resources Four Daily Tasks (Group) Four Daily Tasks (Book) Time Management on Crack (Website) Income Machine (Course)

New Year's Resolutions don't "work" and a "New Month's Accomplishment" is what you need instead. Let me explain... New Year's "resolutions" are silly for a few reasons... They usually aren't S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time-bound). SMART goals are pretty self explanatory but let me lay it out so there's no confusion: when you set out to do something, make sure that it's: simple and clearly defined (specific) something tangible so it's 100% clear whether or not you accomplished that goal (measurable) enough of a stretch to move you out of your comfort zone, but not a shot at the moon (achievable) all about an outcome instead of an activity (results-oriented) in such a timeframe that it creates a sense of urgency for you (time-bound) I think when most people set a goal that they're serious about, they intuitively and automatically make it specific, measurable, and achievable. The two biggies here are "results-oriented" and "time-bound." Issue #1: You're Not Results-Oriented & Time-Bound People don't know WHY they're doing something, for example, someone tells me their big goal is to write a book for their business. Why? Just because. Someone told them to do it. There's no real plan beyond that, and their heart isn't in it (no emotional reason-why) so it's just not going to get done. (It probably won't get started.) The average person makes a silly goal like, "I'm going to run 2 miles every morning all this year." That's bad. It's open-ended, and it's not time-bound. A better goal would be that you're going to walk 10 minutes every evening for one week, and that's it! Nothing recurring. Issue #2: Your Goals Are Too Big Second problem, the goals are the wrong size. Usually too big. They're so big that you've subconsciously set yourself up for failure before you even started. You could have made your goal "write a 1/2 page blog post" but instead you said you'd write a 200-page book, including editing. Can you please be honest with yourself? If you don't want to do anything different this year to grow your business and change your life, I honestly think that's okay, but ONLY if you're honest with yourself about it. That leads us to... Issue #3: Belief & Honesty Third, there's no real belief behind these S.M.A.R.T. goals. Maybe you're going through the motions and setting these goals because you think you "should", and you feel "bad" for not having one. Maybe you feel excited when you plan it out. But that excitement wears out in a few days, doesn't it? The problem with a New "Year" resolution is that you probably start thinking of a goal around December 1st (Thanksgiving is over and it's holiday time), decide on that goal around December 5th, and then give up on the goal completely by December 15th. A small portion of people make it until January 10th, and even less until February 1st. The solution to your "belief" crisis is to gain a small victory so you can not only see what's possible, but you've also broken that vicious cycle of: feel bad -> over-engineer a pie-in-the-sky solution -> give up on it -> feel bad again The Answer: New Month's Accomplishment I have a better path for you and it's actually pretty simple: Don't wait until January 1st to do something different Don't have a huge year-long or recurring goal (just hit the next milestone) Do something SMALL and ONE-TIME, like writing one blog post or going on one walk (anything is better than nothing) Don't tell others you're going to do it (just do it and brag about it later) Use the new month as an excuse to run a new "experiment", but keep doing more what's making money and less of what's not making money Let's just call this a "New Month Accomplishment." This way, it's something small and S.M.A.R.T. that you can knock out. The reason why the end-result is so small is because the journey is more important than the destination, you're trying new things (and re-visiting old things that worked...

I'm finally starting to get it. The newbie mindset (or clarity mindset). Your training should "lean" towards the newbies and making a sense of the mess, with some how-to thrown in. If you don't have a blog, YouTube channel, an affiliate program, and lots of free content or search results where people can find you, then that's yet one more tool that your competitors have at their disposal, that you don't. Useful content: weekly podcast, weekly video, weekly blog post. Ideas: roundup your favorite links, post an embed reactor (a YouTube video and your opinion underneath it), become a "data scientist" and share your results Think beyond just a blog: guest posts, podcast, book, viral videos Mild keyword stuffing: use phrases people are searching Marketer of the week: Steve Celeste from InternetPursuit.com (Steve Celeste wasn't actually his real name, and his blog is long gone, but you can check out an archive on the Wayback Machine.) Steve Celeste's blog and marketing training gave me the idea of creating a "build it to sell it" site. We used that model on DailySeminar.com. I didn't want to commit to a chore of having to crank out membership content on a regular basis, so we listed it for sale even as we were launching it. I also made sure things like the Clickbank account, membership software, etc. were all things that could be detached. The site only had 53 members paying $47/month, but we had 55 "weeks" of content (20 minute Monday training, 20 minute Tuesday training, 20 minute Wednesday interview, Thursday bonus report, and Friday question day) created in advance. That part took about 40 hours of total "work" -- mostly recording training. We launched it on December 15th of (year removed but it was over 8 years ago). By February 27th of the following year, we had a buyer for $32,000 for everything. $32,000 from 40 hours? That's not a bad payday. How do you decide what info to give away or charge for? The answer: Use the "William Shatner" model (he has 228 acting credits on IMDB, appeared as himself in 357 more appearances, 9 CDs on Amazon, and 70 books on Amazon). Keep putting stuff out there. Reasons People Buy From You They love you: they buy everything you put out (top 1%) They want it (fad or trend): You got in front of a wave, i.e. everyone's talking about membership sites or one click funnels so you're teaching that They need it: you're solving a real problem (people will always need to know about affiliate programs, copywriting, etc.) Fear, convenience, entertainment What path brings people to you? Our favorite Platinum studnet (Dr. Charles) came from a Jeff Mills guest webinar we presented, then he attended our live event in Salt Lake City and joined our Platinum there. Another Platinum client came from a one-time $997 mastermind session we both attended in Las Vegas. Yet another Platinum student of ours came from a speaking gig where I presented an pitched a $997 offer in San Diego. Blogging and podcasting the "random-ness" (mindset etc) has put me on a path for the big ideas for books and courses. Here's where I stay in inspired and get a "feel" for what's popular and what people want to hear (without becoming a copycat or a me-too): Facebook: Unfollow the negative nelly, political complainers or time vampires on Facebook and instead follow: BusinessInsider, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc Magazine, Fast Company. Inspiring blogs: Copyblogger, Neil Patel, Ray Edwards, Chris Lema 2nd tier blog: Shoemoney, Digital Marketer, John Chow, Buffer, WPTavern It's also been helpful seeing bloggers like Tim Ferriss from the Four Hour Workweek write long-form blog posts in an era where people are trying to tell you that attention spans are down. John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire consistently publishes 5 podcast interviews per week (now well over 1100+) which I find super cool. IMNewsWatch is yet another example of sites that put out tons and tons of helpful free content that lead to things to...

What ways is your marketing talking you OUT of a sale? Some ways are ok: being true to your personality, because you're polarizing -- repelling some and attracting others. You don't have to apologze, and I'll explain why! But if you repel the "serious buyers" and only attract the "tire-kickers" -- that hurts you long term. What's your goal? Our marketer of the Week is Robert Cialdini, author of "Influence": I've used his "six keys to influence" in my speaking, webinars, sales letters and more. The are: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. Are you missing one or two of them, or are you skewed way over towards one of these six factors? Scenarios We're Talking About Today... Are You Guilty of Any Of These I'm viewing a sales letter for a live chat plugin, but there's no live chat on the page. I'm about to buy a course on copywriting taught by some of the super-old "legends" until the sales letter tells me: by the end of module two, you'll have an idea of how to start your sales letter soon. What?! I sold a WP sales letter that wasn't actually on WordPress. Better fix it. Selling an "alternate" webinar service but you're pitching it on GoToWebinar. Selling an "alternate" landing page plugin but you're selling it on LeadPages. Blog post saying not to use "admin" as your WordPress login because it's easy to see if it's a valid account. I go to their WP login page, admin is a valid user on that blog. Selling a podcast course, no podcast. Or just one short episode of a podcast. That tells me you're not a master. Checklist to "Check For Holes" to Your Own Business Background: What does someone find when they do their quick "research" on you, or Google search? Selling a book writing course, better have a book in print. Article course, better have some articles. Something impressive. Testimonials: better check the URLs under each testimonials in your sales letter (don't hyperlink them though) to see if the websites are still there. If not, remove the URL and ask your list for some fresh testimonials. Bottlenecks: is there an area of your sales letter that "scares" people? Long video, mentioning of too much work (3 weeks) Negative Social Proof: 100 copies total, only 96 remaining? No one wants it! Beware of Victim Copywriting: I suffered for 20 years making this so you don't have to. Great, so you'll only get buyers who "delight" in your pain. This is 500 pages, 50 hours, no one cares! Now you're talking me out of a sale. Gray Areas: fake scarcity, countdown timer, launching/closing/reopening. Unpredictability and urgency to a point. It's a booster, but don't let it become a crutch. Internet Marketing Lessons Don't overthink it, but put your best foot forward. You don't have to be a master with 20-50 years experience, but don't leave yourself vulnerable to research. Be very careful with "distractions" like live action video, demos, lots of features and case studies to understand it -- less is more! Because I Can: you're free to say whatever you want, the only consequence is they "vote with their wallets" -- don't condone customer bullying. Life Lessons from Robert Plank Any action is better than no action. It's easier to edit crap than air. Time sorts out impostors from those who are truthful. Meaning, people aren't going to pay for ads or pay to keep a site going forever if it's not making money. What to Do Now Check out Speed Copy to get the best copywriting training out there and close the bottlenecks on your websites Download and install Paper Template to get your sales letter the best it can be (with a copywriter built into the software) Setup Your Income Machine (SEO blog, autoresponder sequence, traffic, etc.) to setup a passive income business

I'm going to get really personal today and talk about times I've screwed up... Marketer of the week: Stu McLaren from stu.me and Wishlist Member. Rather than share a "breakthrough" I picked up from Stu, I want to tell you that when I present (a webinar or podcast), I imitate his speaking style. When you speak, speak deliberately! Especially if you're an American and your natural tendency is to slur your words like I do. Is there anyone in your life who speaks slowly and carefully, without becoming monotone? Then I would suggest you imitate that person's speaking style when you present. (That's us a few years ago at Inc. Magazine headquarters at 7 World Trade Center in New York City.) I often "channel" Stu to slow down my speaking, enunciate, and speak more clearly, focus, calm. You can be intense but still make sense. See also: Ray Edwards, Armand Morin. Fourteen Key Principles: The Common Thread That Runs Through These Successes & Failures Four Daily Tasks: I said it before and I'll say it again... Finishing everything that I start, less notebook doodling $997, $47 every 2 weeks, 5 payment option, experimenting! Charging high ticket AND low ticket. Investing in myself: attend conferences instead of stock trading which is gambling and a distraction. Dave Ramsey instead of Jim Cramer. I don't trust myself: get to the Minimum Viable Product because of the 3 day window. I'm not smart: I don't know what's going to sell without experimenting and I'm open to new ideas. Weekly focus: email for the same thing all week. Stick to your guns, don't psych yourself out or let customers bully you Membership sites: organize both high and low ticket, group multiple sites (but no all-in-one site) Pitch webinars: do something unexpected, teach a lot and sell hard. Give them a wow moment and not necessarily an aha moment. Re-marketing: phase out what's not selling and go back in future weeks to promote what's selling (Backup Creator) Don't delete old sites or content Your most popular content, marketing and products are the "beginner" stuff It's ok to repeat your most "powerful" ideas and phrases. How many times have I mentioned Income Machine in podcasts and blog posts? A lot! Don't be a timid marketer. Welcome pitch emails, upsells, ads. Don't have a buyers only email list or a monthly digest email list. Be on the lookout for what you can absorb/apply, for example, an affiliate bonus package. Three Biggest Failures ClickSensor: should have made it an online service WPLetter (now Paper Template): should have built it out more and controlled the market faster (16k overnight from a 12 minute video) Action PopUp: should have got the entire marketplace using it, added tons of templates Bonus: all the PHP products, which made money, but not enough. Lesson: keep publishing things to get to "the good stuff." Three Biggest Successes Bulk content creation: books, Daily Seminar, Webinar Crusher monthly, blog, podcast. Just make 12 pieces of content to last you an entire year. Must-have tool for everyone's business such as Backup Creator: pitch is all about what you can do with it, 100k sites, tie in with our other stuff (Membership Cube) -- yearly renewals, developer license Pain of disconnect in Membership Cube: selling high ticket, playing with the payment plans, pitching on webinars! (35k in a couple hours) Bonus: platinum coaching program. Lesson: the first step is getting the button online! Wise Words to Live By When you can't change the direction of the wind, adjust your sails. If you don't change the direction you're going, then you're likely end up where you're heading. Albert Einstein: "Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value." Napoleon Hill: "Keep your eyes and ears wide open--and your mouth CLOSED, if you wish to acquire the habit of prompt DECISION. Those who talk too much do little else. If you talk more than you listen,

The only way you're going to make any kind of consistent progress is to break it up into milestones. The expert in anything was once a beginner. Wise Words... The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. -- Winston Churchill When people say mean things about you, it's a reflection on themselves. You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. -- John C. Maxwell INTERNET MARKETER OF THE WEEK: Marlon Sanders He's from TheTrafficDashboard.com and the best piece of "strategic" advice I ever heard from him is to: Absorb the changes. This means, if you put out a great product, service, app, etc. and someone copies you, adding a few features, then copy them right back and make it even better. Use their copying of your idea to make your idea one step ahead of theirs. People give "cliched" advice like: just serve one person, imagine a customer avatar, success leaves clues. Model successful people. What do you do when you're burnt out? Someone "steals" your idea? (No, they copied. Stealing suggests you don't have it anymore.) The best ideas are combinations of 2-3 things. iPhone, Facebook. Most people have too many ideas, too scatterbrained, pulled in different directions. Most people can't tell the forest from the trees. Successful FUNDAMENTALS to Model from Other Marketers High ticket course (profit margin) Low ticket solution or software (list) Warm up: free blog posts, YouTube videos, autoresponder sequence with a blend of pitch and content. A short book couldn't hurt. Platinum coaching program: easy money Be a thought leader, speaker, innovator, teacher, even if it doesn't come "naturally" Knock these out one at a time (series) and not all at once (parallel) Things Angering Me This Week No real mailing address on your websites? What are you afraid of? Linking directly to an order form from an email? At least show the "contract" of what I'm getting. Trying to piece together a solution (i.e. podcasting) when you should have just bought a damn course (Podcast Crusher, uDemy) Get it working now and connect the pieces later, so you can whip up the interface when you're in that frame of mind. You don't want to over-engineer software OR your business. 8-Step Software Iteration Process (That Also Works for Non-Software Membership Sites) psuedocode / "ugly" basic interface (text and buttons) proof of concept mock-up interface test cases working interface connect it all together debugging interface again based on use-cases (iterate) You might have to do 10-20% more "work" in the long run, but you'll have a more stable product, make the money faster. You sometimes have to "see" a design or interface in action. Non-software example: first get the results. Show how you can get consistent AdWords traffic. Keep a swipe file. Develop a checklist. Make it easily do-able and easily relatable. Resources WP Notepad (Checklists and Fill in The Blank Forms for Your Membership Site) Membership Cube (Create Your Membership Site in WordPress) Software Secrets Explained (Create Software Without Coding)

Internet marketer of the week: Big Jason Henderson from BetterPostureGuaranteed.com BigMarketingOnline.com. My big breakthrough from him: a membership site doesn't have to be a recurring forever monthly payment. You can create a single payment, or even better, a fixed term site, instead of that old and tired download page, using Member Genius. Things Angering Me This Week Black Friday deals, discounts. It's a drug for your business. Get that quick "hit" that you pay for later. What you're trying to obtain from the discount is to get non-buyers to buy something low ticket. Get the juices flowing. I buy from you and you say, check your email for the download link. What? Send me to a membership signup so I get an email and have a lost password link for later. Member Genius takes care of all that. No support link from your sales letter or your membership site? Time to change that. Five Things to Identify So You Can Get the Magic Feeling Back Signal #1: Fear-driven thoughts. Have you been told to "manage your expectations?" Then you're always expecting to be let down. That's not a solution. That's settling! Serve the needs of those who deserve it (customers), and cut out those dragging you down. Avoid lists of your failures, enemies. What's the point? We become what we focus on AND we become what we repeatedly do. There will be up's and down's in your business. Signal #2: What's the pattern? Buy that course, find one thing you don't like with it? Refund or just don't implement? Off to more of the same stuff? What if you implemented exactly as they showed you? Don't be smarter than the person. Who cares if you don't "like" the person. The real test: does it do what you said it would? Signal #3: Can I just get one thing out of it? Go through it all. Do it all. Russians who copied WW2 planes. They left the dents in. Signal #4: What can and can't you control? Don't depend on anything external for happiness. Only you can be happy, satisfied, and fulfilled. Are you setting yourself up for disappointment, because you know you can't control it? My old reliable thought is: "what's good about this, or what could be good about this?" Signal #5: Have a good support system. As in, a helpful mastermind, mentor, and role model. Kick out those toxic people and instead, get some positive perspective. What's your goal, anyway? To pick up one extra thing? To master Facebook ads? To figure out how this person got 800 webinar attendees? This Week We Talked About... Income Machine: Setup your money site with Backup Creator, Paper Template, and Member Genius Webinar Crusher: Create your webinar courses and one hour pitches Make a Product: Publish your book on Amazon Dropship CEO: Sell physical products on Amazon Quotes of the Week "You cannot change others but you can change yourself" "The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about." -- Wayne Dyer If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed. -- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor It helps to know what goal you're after, and then you can monitor those who have what you want.

Are you annoyed that an Internet marketer is marketing to you? Instead of looking at other marketers as people who are "serving" you as a consumer, why don't you look at what successful things they repeatedly do, like consistent products, blogging, and webinars? And model what they do! Marketer of the Week: Dennis Becker Dennis wrote the book from 5BucksADay and has the membership site Earn1kaday. Like me, actually leaves his money-making websites online. What a concept.   If a site makes me money, I'll keep maintaining and promoting it. He has lots of irons in the fire such as a new product and new Kindle book every month. Complaints of the Week I'm at your sales letter. Where do I go to login to your membership site? I bought the "lite" version and I login. Where can I go to upgrade? Marketers delight, 5 site license to unlimited license. What about an in-your-face upsell or interstitial ad? I want something else you're selling. You're supposed to "sell the click" in emails but what the heck am I clicking on? You're only telling me about the Pro and Basic packages, launch deadlines, but what it is, in one sentence? Feature Presentation: Course, Blog, Podcast, Book, DVD I once found an internet marketer "coach's" page but I couldn't find 1 product, 1 video, 1 book by him or even his last name. What do people find when they search for you? What about on YouTube? Amazon? You should always be URL dropping or off-handedly mentioning the things you sell on your blog and podcast. Who needs testimonials? Use yourself as you own examples, testimonials, and case studies. Course: Four milestones for $997 to get in the "high ticket" mindset, then drop that price SLIGHTLY (MembershipCube.com) Blog: content marketing, cannibalize your Facebook re shares, 5 minute YouTube content: what pisses you off (your opinion) or something helpful (video to create a PayPal mass pay file, or resize an image without Photoshop) (IncomeMachine.com) Podcast: 5 minute audio, no music (PodcastCrusher.com) Book: 10-7-4, WWHW, 56 minutes, Fiverr for transcripts (MakeAProduct.com) DVD: iPhone, Camtasia, DVD Architect, Kunaki (also MakeAProduct.com) Today's quote: "The difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried."  

Internet marketer of the week: Ray Edwards. Creator of the Rapid Writing Method. He absorbs what Brendon Burchard, Michael Hyatt, Dave Ramsey all do very well -- branding and unification. A huge breakthrough I got out of his "Writing Riches" book was that just taught straightforward copywriting. Not a lot of silly stories or parables mixed in like others teach you "should" have in a book. What a concept! Common Cop Outs (That We Just Solved in Today's Show)   My niche is people with money! Who wouldn't want it? My niche is young people because they're smart, or old people because they have all the money Split test it! I'm going to provide value and give everything away for free I'm still learning I have an idea but it's already been done before I have an idea but I'm waiting on someone else to do the work I'm "waiting" for the right time A Confused Mind Never Buys! Delayed buy button and I can't buy, or I can't buy on an iPad I optin and I can't buy right away, I have to wait for your sequence I have to buy 3 upsells just to get the thing I actually wanted (Lance says: sell what you sell) Blogging or posting without purpose (Add Signature plugin and URL dropping) Too many choices: 2 or 3 at the most. More choices = "experimental" pages (yearly and trial) Optin page: headline, 3 bullet points, call to action, optin form (no video, no testimonials) Sales letter: have you noticed they're way shorter? very few words, even. Software is all about the screenshots and features. Short & To the Point Landing Pages: Keep it Shippable Make the buy button first, before anything else Then headline and subheadline Then the offer stack (what's in it) Then flesh out the bullet points (dream product), story and transitions Then create the product after all that! (PLR placeholder is optional) Quick Questions Answered in Today's Program To replay or not to replay? Non fast forward video? Squeeze page? What's the exact structure? What niche? Healthy, wealthy, or wise What product? Solve an actual problem that's easy for you, tough for others, that people are willing to pay money for, that's repeatable in checklist form, but there's still enough wiggle room for people to be creative. It gets them there and delivers a FAST result Testimonials? Don't let that hold you back from launching. No review copies, but have an email sequence asking how they like it. When people use it and respond, piece together a testi from their response. Upsell? This is another "goodie" you don't need right away. It shouldn't "just" be something "bigger" or something lazy like resale rights. It should be "the bigger picture." Five Dimensions of Knowledge from Jonathan Wells of AdvancedLifeSkills.com What we actually know What we think we know What we would like to know What we don't need to know What we used to know Let's add two more (the hardest ones to sell to you have to "sneak them" inside other ones: what we don't know we don't know, and what we need to know Internet Marketing World's largest taxi service owns no taxis (Uber) Largest accommodation provider owns no real estate (Airbnb) Largest retailer has no inventory (Alibaba) Most popular media company creates no content (Facebook) Largest movie house owns no theaters (Netflix) Largest software vendors don't write the apps (Apple & Google) Today's Quotes from Henry Ford You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do. Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. Quality means doing it right when no one is looking. Attributes That Should Be Running in Your Head all the Time, Consistently New Things Coming Down The Pipeline: There is no such thing as luck. (Scientific studies have disproved luck.) You just have to keep putting offers out there and promoting them. Follow-Through: Finish what you start (focus, minimum viable product, iteration, debugging, refactoring)

We recently launched our Website Remote service. It allows you to centrally manage and update your WordPress sites. We created it because there was no good way to manage all our WordPress sites from one location. The other solutions that "tried" to do it, sucked! Solve a real problem. It doesn't matter if "a" solution already exists. It probably sucks. Yours will be better. When we put Website Remote together, and had our new affiliates sell and market our existing Backup Creator plugin, I had a few realizations... Realization #1: Get Out More You don't have to confine yourself to little sites like the Warrior Forum. You can use other peoples' land to build a list, but don't live there. This is true when it comes not just to pricing and positioning your products, but also what advice or training you listen to. Your business is your business. You're free to charge whatever price you want, limit the number of sales, email as often as you want. Update your blog or submit podcasts as frequently as you feel like, because you can. You don't need any reason for why you're doing what you're doing in your online business, other than because you can. Realization #2: Eat Your Own Dog Food If you actually use the products you create and sell, then you can't use because it's something that helps your business regardless of how slow or quickly it sells. The programming term "eating your own dog food" means that if you use the thing you sell every day, then you'll transform it to a piece of crap into something that's useful. To make our tool useful, we iterated. I created a simple version of our tool, and had Lance login sight unseen and show me how he was using it, and where he got stuck, to see his thought process. This is called hallway testing. Because of "dog-fooding", we added SSL support for our Paper Template, Member Genius, and Video Player plugins this month, and made them all compatible with WordPress caching plugins, because we needed those things in place for our launch. This past couple of weeks, we launched our new version of Backup Creator (3.0) and had an army of affiliates make us a bunch of sales, without us using our list at all. We gave away 100% commissions, and the point wasn't to make money but to recruit some new affiliates and build a list of buyers. Realization #3: Treat Your Business Like a Real Business We created the minimum viable product (version 1.0) and the launch deadline pushed us into gear and got our priorities in order. Get that first version out there, and market the hell out of it. Don't make any rash moves like offering discounts or lifetime access which shouldn't be on your radar for a long time until you can "run the numbers." Price your offers where there's buying resistance. Don't give into the mob. You might just need better marketing. We need to do a little better with the positioning on Website Remote to compete against free, inferior, and generally worse "similar" products (not necessarily competitors). Realization #4: Follow the "Four Daily Tasks" in Order to Get Everything Done Four Daily Tasks means you should complete four business-related tasks, each in one sitting (three 45 minute sessions and one 10 minute session). Every day, complete the four tasks that get you closer to making more money. I'm at my best when I alternate days between proactive business-building tasks (traffic and product creation), and on alternate days, business-maintenance tasks like answering support desk tickets. Automate your business as much as you can, for example, queue up autoresponder emails for the week so there are no distractions. Simple Words of Advice It takes the same amount of energy to feed your dreams as it does your fears. Make a list of things that make you happy. Make a list of things you do every day. Compare the lists. Adjust accordingly. 12 things successful people do differently: They Create and Pursue FOCUSED Goals They Take Decisive and Immediate ACTION

Are you scared? What if you became more aware of what made you anxious, scared, or nervous? Could you dissect those into smaller pieces? If you did, you'd be able to change and improve those small, manageable pieces... What if I asked you to write down a page of words to describe a "bad mood" such as: flustered, dejected, beat-down? What if I asked you to then write a list of words describing a "good mood" such as: happy, energized, bubbly? My guess is, that list of "bad mood" words would be longer than the "good mood" list. Let's change that for you. To become more successful in both our personal lives and our businesses, we need to become more detailed about the positive things and less detailed about the negative. Whatever you apply more detail to is where your mind will focus. What's the "trick" for overcoming that fear and thinking more positively and effectively? Answer on a 1 to 10 Scale When you go to the store, the clerk asks, "How are you?" Both of you are expecting your response to be a mono-syllabic "good" or maybe a "great." Instead of doing that, ask yourself how you are on the 1-10 scale. Maybe you're having a "better than average" day, so you say 8.1. Not only do you cause a "pattern interrupt" for the clerk, which might get you a nice laugh, but it will help you out by causing you to actually think about how you feel, instead of just replying generically with a word that has no real meaning. Use the 1 to 10 Scale in Your Own Business Okay, so we can see how evaluating yourself on a 1-10 scale can put you more ‘in touch' personally, but how does it help in your business? Here are a few examples: Writing and Revising: The majority of people are not the greatest writers but if you are in internet marketing, you have to put out content. You need to be able to put out on okay first draft and for the most part a first draft is good enough. This isn't school and you're not going to triple your income by making some small edits to an email. If you're writing a book, you might need to spend more time than on a blog post, but the principle is the same. We don't want to spend an hour writing 1 chapter of a book and then spend 5 hours doing edits. How do you edit quickly so you don't consume all of your time? Again, the answer is scale from 1 to 10. Once the book is written (and it's been typed/spell-checked), you could just skim paragraphs and rate each one on a scale from 1 to 10 for substance. Then, you quickly average those to get an "overall" rating. If you come up with an 8 or 9, great. But, if you come up with a 7.0 book, and you wanted an 8.0, your strategy would be to just go through and focus on fine-tuning the lower-rated paragraphs. Overall Business Strategy: What if you're not making enough money from your online business? What if someone asked you, "How are you doing with Facebook ad campaigns?" If you answered with "good" or "okay", that's not going to help. "Good" is not measurable and it's an "automatic" response, instead of one that forces you to look for clarity. Use that 1 to 10 scale to pinpoint issues. Rating gives you better accuracy about what/where the problem is and where you'll improve it. Here are 10 areas that you could focus on and maximize to improve your business overall and make more money. Time management and Mindset Building the List Email Follow-up and Auto-responder sequences Membership Retention New Customers Joint Ventures Free Traffic Paid Traffic Info Products and Recurring Income Big-Ticket Sales and Coaching Write a number next to each of those above items. Look at these factors individually and "score" them. This draws attention to areas where you'll capitalize to improve the overall picture. For example, if a real problem that you have is not emailing, rate that lower. If you need more traffic, then you'd rate those lower. Doing these one by one will help you think of solutions to improve that specific aspect of your business. Then,

I'm going in for surgery on the ankle today (Friday) and it has me thinking a lot about being negative (or rather, avoiding or "fixing" that negativity that creeps up), being honest and owning up to things like procrastinating without labeling and feeling sorry for yourself, so you can actually make progress on yourself -- because no one else will do it for you. As internet marketers, we need to motivate ourselves. Let's be real... sometimes stuff just happens. You have to find the good in situations, get some perspective, and be honest without feeling sorry for yourself and labeling your situations or the emotions. Then, you are better able to look at things in a positive light. Be Honest With Yourself This is probably the most important thing we're going to talk about today. Just think about how you would answer these questions and we're going to talk about some solutions afterwards. Do you find yourself filtering out the positive things that happen to you? Or, do you minimize all the good things while only focusing on one negative circumstance? Do you blame yourself for everything that happens, even if it is out of your control? Do you always expect the worst in any situation?Do you only see things in terms of black and white? If any of these 4 things apply to you, then you might have some negativity problems. Let's talk about some ways to combat those. Approaches, Strategies and Solutions Do you have a support system that gets you out of that "rut" you sometimes fall into? It's tough to go it alone. Just explaining the problem or the frustration itself can help you get past it. Are you preventing the problem before it even happens? "Play out" the scenarios of what could happen. A good strategy here is to make a list of the "enemies" you're fighting against and categorize the fears. Out of those, what's the simplest one to take care of? Let's say your situation is that you're going to be broke and your fears about it are losing your car, your marriage breaking up, and becoming homeless. Which one of these can you work on first and easiest? A lot of the issues that led you to a problem are by you not getting out of your comfort zone or not having real goals to drive you. Let's use the money example again. You are basing all of your income hopes on this one product launch and it doesn't go well and you're afraid you're going to lose it all. Then, it would be time to get out of your comfort zone and do things you might not want to do so you don't lose your shirt. Things like joining Fiverr, freelancing, getting a part-time job, etc. "Always do what you're afraid to do." Are you aware of simple mindset tools? It's simple. There are simple mindset tools and strategies all over the place-you can just search the internet for "self-help mindset." For Robert, there's no one solution. There's probably 5 or 6 at any given time. it's a matter of identifying which one works for the situation. A mindset is also called "a state", which is a collection of emotions that can get you thinking and acting in a certain way. Sometimes you just need to "change your state." Maybe you've been in front of the computer for too long working on a problem. Go for a drive. Go to a movie. It might also mean removing the triggers that put you in that state. If you get in a ‘bad mood' from something that you can remove, then do so. Think about the words you're using. We tend to describe "positive" feelings in one syllable words, like "good" while we use big words for negative feelings. Start replacing the ‘positive' feelings with big words, like ‘fantastic', ‘fabulous', etc. They're less automatic, meaning we have to think about them more. The more you think about something…you guessed it-the more it becomes your ‘state'. Think about the words that you're using to describe situations. Turn "negative words" into "challenge" words. Instead of something being a "disaster", call it an "adventure."

I broke my ankle in two places this past Saturday evening. I was dancing at a wedding and walked over a wet spot on an already shiny, slippery, coated cement floor. There was water (or maybe wine) spilled in a little spot that I didn't see, and I slipped and landed on it with all my weight. The technical term is a "fibular and medial malleolar fracture" and they had to reset (or I guess "reconfigure") the bones (very painful) and I'll be hopping around on crutches for a few weeks and keeping it elevated in bed. What I found interesting is that the orthopedist, emergency room doctor, nurse, etc. kept asking me... what do you do for a living? Is this going to affect your work? Luckily I've "worked" from home for 6 1/2 years and I'm glad I don't have to worry about that kind of thing. In fact, the last couple of days have been hugely productive in my business. I've been making leaps and bounds in productivity, getting my upcoming "Website Remote" wordpress tool ready for our November 11 launch date, even from bed (currently "My Little Pony" sheets): I'll give you ten quick reasons why you can run a business, even if you're bedridden and only have a few hours per day: Lesson 1: The Best Productivity Tool at Home: Camtasia + GoToWebinar + Google Calendar Many internet marketers consider themselves in "learning mode" which really means they're spending all their time studying (and doing a good job of it) but not implementing, but if they are implementing, they're just dabbling, taking action on the fun or small stuff, and not what's going to make them money. Or they can self-label as a "procrastinator" which is just a fancy way of feeling sorry for yourself. The best thing I did in my online business (which I delayed for years) was recording video for products instead of writing them. You can whip up an easy $47 or $97 product in 1 to 3 hours -- do it all in one take and don't worry about the "umm's." Don't nickel and dime yourself looking for "free" or "cheaper" alternatives. You'll end up piecing together lots of things that don't do what you want and wasting money and time on the wrong tools. Use Camtasia (free trial) and a $30 Logitech ClearChat USB headset. Show whatever you need to show on your screen (PowerPoint, web browser, or software) to teach someone how to do something (edit video, trade in the stock market, soup up your race car). Then, use GoToWebinar to meet and record each "module" of your course if you want to do it live (using Camtasia to save the video for sale later). Use GoToWebinar for a bonus Q&A session and even to pitch the course later. We give you a free GoToWebinar at WebinarCrusher.com and even if you were a cheapskate, you could knock all this out within 30 days and only have to make one payment. Also use Google Calendar to show up on whatever webinar Q&A, product creation, pitch sessions, or even meetings. Use them to meet your deadlines, i.e. even just to create one 1-hour module each day for 4 days, whip up a 1-hour sales letter on the 5th day, and so on. Lesson 2: The Best Productivity Tool Away from Home: iPad + LogMeIn + Evernote What do you do if you're not at home? What have I been doing while laying in bed and still building my business? It's simple. You don't need to drag the computer to bed or find a crappy iPad version for the apps you want to use for coding, word processing, and web page editing. Heck, you can get most things accomplished using a web browser... But for many desktop tasks such as coding and web page editing, I prefer to use LogMeIn, which is a remote desktop program. Install the LogMeIn "control panel" on your desktop, and then you can remotely control it from your iPad. See your screen, click, drag, and type. I use an iPad Air. You want to get the cellular version so you can connect even if you're not on Wifi (AT&T only costs me $29.99/month for this). A 64GB iPad Air 2 costs $729 and a 32GB iPad AIr 1 costs $579.

Find a new product idea, build a course and implement a repeatable system for a constant revenue stream.When you're creating a product, you need to have WWHW in place. WWHW is your "system." You need to have a system in place so you stay on point, lay out each point you promised in your sales letter, and know when you've gotten to the finish line. What-these are the steps you're going to take. For example, you're going to show how to log in to a site, you're going to show how to install a plug-in. Why-this is why the customer wants to use it. For example, to make money. How To-this is your media component. For example, a video on how to use WordPress. You will be showing your customers from beginning to end what the process looks like. What If-this is the challenger at the end. When you're making your membership site, you want to lay it out in modules. Four modules are ideal, at about an hour each. Each module is a milestone in the process. You want to be 100% clear what the end goal is going to be in each module. Now, let's put these into practice by doing a case study of Robert's Graphic Dashboard (www.graphicdashboard.com) Graphic Dashboard Case Study Graphic Dashboard is a course on how to use Pixlr, which is a free software program for graphics creation (www.pixlr.com). For reference, we are going to point out that some time ago, Robert bought a course on how to create graphics in PhotoShop. It was full of useless and/or very advanced topics such as how to rearrange toolbars and a long explanation on how to do 3D graphics. This product was meant for people who didn't even know how to do 2D yet! You don't want to do what "PhotoShop Guy" did so that's why Robert and Lance didn't spend oodles of time on how to make 1000 different shapes. Instead, you want to show your customers something they can actually use today. Think of it like this: You want to teach them the equivalent of making $1 million in 5 minutes. Okay, that sounds a little far-fetched but the point is, your goal is to tell your customers how they can use your product right now to make money. That means not playing around (like "Photoshop Guy" and the toolbars), but doing something practical and useful like making a logo or a banner. If you teach someone how to create a banner, you've given them the heads-up on creating affiliate banners. They can start getting affiliates to make money! Creating Your Modules Next, you take that goal (i.e. teaching them something practical that earns money) and use that to create your modules. Each module is going to have the WWHW elements and each will have a measurable milestone the customer will reach by the end of the module. For Graphic Dashboard, the modules are: Module 1 is how to create affiliate banners. Module 2 is how to list your graphics-making services on Fiverr to make some money Module 3 is how to make digital 3D product covers Module 4 is how to make book covers and DVD graphics The 4 Stages of Figuring out Your "Hook" for your modules are: The Hobby Mindset This is playing around and researching to see what will sell. "Crack the code" to start making money from it Once you've figured out what will sell, this is how it can be applied to start making money with it. Systematize It "Template-ize" your service and your delivery system. Trim the fat the fat to make it fast, fun and profitable. Get it down to a 1-2-3 system that can be duplicated time and again for quick, achievable results. The Sales Letter Now, you put together your sales letter outlining your 4 modules and how customers can quickly benefit from each thing you're teaching. Important Point: Why is Robert not using PhotoShop instead of Pixlr? PhotoShop is a paid product belonging to someone else. The customer would already have to have PhotoShop. He doesn't want to have to convince someone to use PhotoShop in his sales letter because then they would have to leave his site to go buy it.

The good, the bad and the ugly about solo ads vs. affiliate networking... There are many ways to get traffic. Some of the older ones include fads such as: Joint Venture Giveaways: someone would sign up and have access to multiple giveaways that they could then send to their list. Everyone in the network would be cross-mailing their own lists, offering these giveaways, to attract traffic to their site. Viral Reports: you have a special report (i.e. how to set up a basic WordPress site) and mail it to your list and the link back to your site is included in the report. For each of your subscribers that passes it on and gets a new subscriber to sign up, you could pay them a $1 per new subscriber. Traffic Exchanges: this operates similarly to the JVG above where there's multiple people in the network. You would join it and then everyone is rotating through viewing multiple sites and each one you view gets you a credit. With these credits, you could then buy banner ads, etc. to drive people back to your site where they would hopefully buy your product. Co-Registration: you would sign up with several other marketers and basically cross-promote. As subscribers signed up for your list, they were signing up for other lists in the same group as well. Safe Lists: join an email-based community with several other marketers. It's really just marketers mailing other marketers each day. Renting/Buying a List: you can choose parameters and order a list from a site like InfoUSA, to market to and pad your own list. Even if they don't opt-in, you can create retargeting ads that follow them around the internet. All of the above have either gone "out of style" because they didn't work forever, or because they became illegal under the CAN-SPAM Act. Now, the major forms of driving new traffic are Solo Ads or Affiliate Networking. Solo Ads Solo ads are when you pay someone else to mail out your offers to their list. You are paying someone else, who already has an established list, for email leads. It sounds good in theory. What are the pitfalls? It's a great way for the solo ad seller to make money, not necessarily you and probably not you. They don't have to expend any effort-they are not marketing their own product and they are not having to take the time to research affiliate programs. Not everyone's lists are created equal. You don't really know where they got the names on their list from. Some are built from questionable traffic sources. Example: AdFly. The traffic you get from using Ad.Fly is mostly from interstitial ads, the ads that are placed before you can see articles and videos, etc. It's very untargeted traffic because you can't enter keywords. There is nothing that you have that everyone wants to buy. So, in this case you'd be paying someone to send ads to a list where subscribers aren't even interested in your niche. You could be paying $1 per click if your squeeze page is on target and converts at 50%, which is a good conversion rate. Tip: for a good squeeze page, see our Backup Creator squeeze page. You Win Some, You Lose Some Over a 1-year period, Robert purchased $1912 in solo ads. For that $1912, he got 3209 clicks, which resulted in 1059 email opt-ins and $502 in sales. This appears to be a $1500 loss but you can keep marketing to them (until and if they opt-out) and generate additional sales later. The good news is that 3209 new subscribers quickly builds your list-if you have a big list, you'll be excited to send out those emails for potential sales, which is the name of the game in internet marketing. Sales! Caveats & Advice The best solo ad sellers that will bring you success are likely those that don't do it as their only income. They may just be doing it for a time while they are on vacation, have family matters to attend to, or are between projects. Robert's experience with solo ad ‘only' You need to put back about 20% of your business income into ad spending so solo ads aren't the worst thing and you...

It's very easy when you first start your internet business, working from home, to fall back into those habits that you have from working for an employer, where you have to fill up 8 hour days one after the other and no "project" really ever has to be done for you to make income. Or, some of those very things that led you to develop an internet-based business, such as wanting to dream ‘big', form your own partnerships, etc., but all of those ideas will not make any money if you do not implement them. It's easy to get pulled into "Scope Creep", where you continue to add more and more features or additional webpages, upsells and bonuses, etc., instead of just focusing on ONE thing and pushing it out there. These are all productivity killers. Instead, you want to think in "Three Day Window" terms. Principles of the Three-Day Window What is it? The 3 day window is the time period from "idea" to "implementation." You have 3 days to get it to a stopping point that if you had to sell it right then you could. It's okay if it's not perfect. You NEED to make some websites that you will look back on later and be embarrassed by. What IS important is getting in the habit of getting your ideas implemented and out there. What if it's lacking some features? You still put it up for sale in its "basic version" at a discounted rate. Instead of your end goal of $97, you sell the basic at $7. Don't sell your first version with multiple features. You can't be sure that your customers want all these "bells and whistles." What's exciting to you is quite probably not exciting to them. It's better to put the product out there and get feedback of the most wanted features and use that to develop your "deluxe" version. As you continue to refine it, you can roll out "iterations" later and charge the higher price(s). Iterations: these are releases each time the product is enhanced/improved, i.e. Version 1.0, 2.0., etc. When Robert created Backup Creator, it only took him 3 days from start to finish to get his first version out. In that first 3 day version, it did do the basic backups. Then, in future iterations, they added additional backup capabilities (i.e. to Amazon S3), cloning abilities, and other features. Why Just 3 Days? If you don't set yourself an "end" date, you will run into issues such as: You spend too much time working on it and get burnt out or bored. Or, you end up doing a lot of things that are not productive or they're fun but they don't really increase your sales, such as spending 2 hours to make a 2-minute sales video. You could have spent that same 2 hours doing at least 2 of your 4 Daily Tasks: A better choice than a video would be to build a bigger list. Examples: contacting affiliates, running ads for traffic to your site, knocking out a great sales letter For more information on 4 Daily Tasks, you can check out the Four Daily Tasks book and Facebook group. You need to think in "milestones" and take a scientific approach. The scientific approach will help you create a framework or "Spec" for your project. Within that framework, you can then be creative. For example, if you make a video: You need to set up how many segments it's going to be and the length of time for each. Then, within those measured segments, you can be creative about what you're going to feature. Today's Take-Away's Don't be the guy (or gal) that has a bunch of stuff on their hard drive without taking any action to put it out there. Use the "4 Daily Tasks" Method to be productive. Do something every day that will result in sales. There's no point in pulling "all-nighters." You're fooling yourself with a lot of empty time. It's more important to have something imperfect that is functioning and earning you money because a lot of work with no income results in boredom and burn out. Join Robert's "4 Daily Tasks" group Get his course on time management: Time Management on Crack

One of the best ways to make money online is to create content that solves problems but a lot of us struggle with writer's block. The answer to that "blank page" is to have a system. Don't be afraid that using a system or a template will result in something that is bland and not unique. It's quite the opposite. The best thing about using a system is that you get the thing DONE. Three Elements of A System The system component-you can think of it as your approach, the actual "1-2-3" of getting words on paper. For example, if you're creating a 400-word article, don't say 400! That sounds huge. Instead, break it down into: Title, Intro, 3 points, Summary, and a Call to Action. Now, what if each of these sections was 50 words? Sounds a lot better, right? You can make things even easier by turning everything into a question. This is a really easy way to do it. Act like you're having a conversation with someone about your subject and think what they would ask about your subject. The answers become your text. Example: What are the 3 things I need to have when playing the guitar? Instead of your title being "Guitar Basics", it becomes, "How Do I Play the Guitar Quickly?" Another Approach is "So What?" This is really helpful in a sales letter. If you notice you have a weak headline and bullet points, pretend someone is saying to you "So what?" You are forced to answer back with something compelling and exciting and emotional. Now, you have script that will hold your buyer's attention! Keep in mind that with sales letters (and with books), you are going to lose someone every 10 minutes. So, for every 10 minutes of reading, you need to have something really exciting and compelling to keep them engaged. Make your buyer say "I don't know", with your email headlines. This is the most effective approach for email marketing. We want to present a question that arouses curiosity. Ex: Don't do a headline like "Simple Guitar Playing." Instead, your headline should be "Are you missing out on these 3 simple guitar tricks?" Then, your buyer is saying, "I don't know. Am I? Let me click over to this link and see". Type out sentences that are only 7 words in length. It sounds silly, but it forces you to keep your language simple. Outside of academia, you don't want to use complicated language and long sentences. It turns internet readers off. Think of keywords if you're really stuck. If you are still really stuck, think in terms of keywords. Have one keyword for each of your 3 bullet points. For example, if you're writing about webinars, your keywords are: "title, date, and time." Then, your first bullet point is on "I create a compelling title for my webinar", the 2nd bullet point is, "The date is more important than you might think because of your demographic" and the 3rd point would be, "Consider your customers' time zones carefully when you're scheduling." Time Management: Give Yourself a Time Frame You really need to do this. If you give yourself unlimited time, the odds are you will sit in front of that blank page for 5 hours with no results. At one point, Robert spoke out 100 articles in one day. How?!!? If you try to think of 100 subjects that your business covers, you're probably going to get overwhelmed and walk away. Instead, think of just TEN subjects and then break those down into 10 prompts (or questions) for those categories. For example, if your business is guitar instruction, your categories might be: equipment, beginner, advanced, starting a band, album recording, etc. Then, for equipment, you'd have "acoustic vs. electric" as a prompt. For starting a band, a prompt would be "how to book shows." With this approach, Robert just started answering and recording the questions/prompts, one after the other and each one took about 3-4 minutes. For this, he used his Logitech Headset and Camtasia for recording. He gave himself 1-hour blocks for each category. If each prompt = 4 minutes,

Setup Your Site the "Right Way" Namecheap: Get your domain name at DoubleAgentDomains.com. HostGator: This is for web hosting. After you buy your domain name, your site has to "live" somewhere. This is web hosting and fou can get this at DoubleAgentHosting.com. AWeber: This is an autoresponder, your essential tool for building a list and keeping in contact with your customers. Get this at DoubleAgentAutoresponder.com. WordPress: This is a free tool that you "place" at the front door of your site. It lets you edit your site and pages without having to know how to write or edit HTML code. You can just click around and create any extra webpages that you like using plugin's and tools that WordPress uses. Once you get webhosting via DoubleAgentHosting.com, there's a special button where you can install WordPress on the front door of your site. Its' going to make creating all the pages we talk about today super simple. Robert has a WordPress plugin called Paper Template that makes everything look like a plain piece of paper that you can customize. You can also buy Robert's course, Income Machine (www.incomemachine.com), which includes Paper Template as well as Member Genius, which is a plugin that allows you to take payments on your site and is integrated with PayPal. Must-Have Web Pages "Front Door" of your site (www.example.com): This is where your sales letter lives. You want to have a place for someone to buy something from you. This page, the sales letter, also has your buy button. Additional tip: when purchasing a domain, also buy a .com, not a .org or a .net. Membership area of your site (www.example.com/members): When people have purchased your product, they go to a page where they create an account and then get access to the members' area. This is a protected area where they can download the product and intake any additional content that goes with the product, such as videos, etc. Also, if they ask for a refund or stop paying installments, their access to this section can be shut off. Training Page (www.example.com/training): This is where you put your 1-hour pitch webinar replay for your product/service. It makes everything simple and easy because you can use your webinar training as anything thing later on (i.e. a 'bonus') and just call it 'live training'. Record your webinar using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page. Demo Page of your site (www.example.com/demo): Here is where you can put a 5-minute demo of something you have in your product/course. This is where you'd put something exciting, such as 'before and after' pictures, evidence of your 3x income generation after flipping a house, or a trick that your software can do. Just like for the training page above, record your demo using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page. Nice-To-Have's Opt-In Page (www.example.com/free): This is where you have just some simple free gift so that people will opt-in to get it, thereby joining your list. Download Page (www.example.com/gift-download): This is where they're redirected to download the free gift. You have a link below that download for them to hop back to your sales letter. Contact Page (www.example.com/contact): An easy form for people to fill out to contact you so that you don't have to share your email address. This is where they can ask questions, ask for interviews, etc. They could send tech problems here but it's better if you have a Help Desk page, which we'll mention in just a few minutes. 7 Extra Pages For No Extra Charge! Blog Page (www.example.com/blog): This is where you put any articles and/or videos you find interesting to your niche. There are places on this page for them to go to your Opt-in page (and get on your list) or go directly to your 'fr...

Just like anything in life, it's a good idea to know WHY you're doing something, as opposed to only "going through the motions"… And if you're only dabbling, if this "internet marketing" thing is only a hobby to you, then it's likely you haven't found very much success because you rarely finish the things you start. If you actually want to make money, it's time to stop dabbling and actually create something. Don't "start" to create something. Actually make that single membership site, add that affiliate program to it, and get some traffic… You need to go all-in. The first problem I see with people going all-in is that they keep changing what they're going "all-in" for, which really isn't going "all-in." You probably know what I'm talking about. Changing to a new niche every month. Only focusing on Pinterest marketing one month because "everyone's" talking about it. Only focusing on Kindle comic books the next month because "everyone's" talking about it… Let's separate the forest from the trees: the only things you need to focus on in your business are your list (so setup an opt-in page and follow-up sequence), traffic (setup a retargeting pixel, run Facebook ads and have an affiliate program) and offers (promote affiliate products and sell your own products). When it comes to list, traffic and offers, there's the MUST-HAVE's (sales letter, email autoresponder) and the NICE TO HAVE'S (blog, podcast, Facebook fan page, etc.) You "could" run your business without a blog (the website you see here) and you could run your business without a podcast (an internet radio show where you post audio episodes on your blog and they also appear in places like the Apple iTunes store). BUT, if you already have SOME kind of sales letter and opt-in page in place, your blog is the TRAFFIC method to get more clicks onto your webpages and a PODCAST is a really easy way to consistently update that blog even if you have just a few minutes every week… I highly recommend our Podcast Crusher course to get your podcast setup. You use your existing blog (or setup a new one) and use a special plugin called PowerPress and a file hosting service called LibSyn. You don't want to host your podcast audio files on Amazon S3 or on your own web host for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that it's easier to look at your stats. You can tell which episodes get the most play and that tells you what kinds of podcast episodes to create in the future. The Robert Plank Show premiered on September 13, 2012. I'm not a super prolific podcaster but I've published 56 episodes with exactly 41 hours of audio content in those three years. I want to get you into podcasting (or BACK into podcasting if you've neglected it) because the traffic is steady consistent, as long as you publish consistently which is probably the #1 most important thing when it comes to podcasting… Podcasting is just audio blogging that happens to get listed on Apple iTunes. Let's just call it what it is. In the past, when I had something to say, I'd spend a couple hours typing out some big long post (kind of like I'm doing to you now). When I want to put out a new podcast: I spend about 10 minutes figuring out some bullet points (if that), and I hit record I speak out my podcast "episode" in one single take, about 30-40 minutes. The "ideal" podcast length is 20 minutes, but that's a little short to cover the things I want to cover, although I don't want to go over 60 minutes After recording the audio, I spend about 1 minute adding intro and outro music. Important: I don't edit out any "um's" or "ah's" or anything like that It takes another 1 minute or so to properly "tag" the file for podcast players and add things like my cover graphic into the file About 1 more minute to upload the audio file to the special hosting service (just wait for a simple file to upload) Finally, I go to my WordPress blog at RobertPlank.com, click Add New Post,

When we run our own businesses and don't have a "boss" to answer to, it can be easy to fall back into old habits of goofing off. It's easy to fall back into the habit of filling up time because when you worked at your "day job", the objective was to fill up 8 hours a day. Today, we're going to talk about getting all that clutter that we're used to from a day job out of the way. Quick Computer Programs Everyone Can Use to Improve Their Productivity Online Stopwatch: Use this to time yourself doing a task so that you truly commit to getting it done in a certain amount of time, i.e. knock out a blog post in 10 minutes instead of thinking about it for an hour. Camtasia: This software can record everything you're doing online. This is excellent software for recording tutorials, software walk-through demo's, etc. You can simultaneously record your processes as well as your spoken audio. We'll talk more in depth regarding Camtasia a little later in the episode. Google Calendar: This is free and you already have it if you have a Gmail account. If you don't, you can just go to www.google.com/calendar to get it. It's great because you can synchronize it to your iPhone and iPad as well as share it with other users, such as spouses and business partners. It will send you popups/emails for upcoming appointments. Don't schedule EVERYTHING you do on your calendar-you'll just end up creating a glorified to-do list. Use it for essential appointments, such as meetings and webinars, etc. Don't forget to check out Robert's Book, 100 Time Savers for more useful advice. Essential Software/Programs for Internet Marketers Camtasia Studio (again): You can record a full video and save that but also have the option of saving just the audio portion. You could use the audio for doing something like a podcast. You can even record tutorial videos or "helper videos" just for yourself. If Robert has a particular process he has to go through, that he doesn't want to forget, he can record the entire process and then post that video to YouTube. Some examples would be how to convert a .wav audio file to an MP3 file: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4Z7_47zToA ... Or how to convert any graphics file into a JPEG thumbnail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy75zatrDcQ ... Or how to upload a book to CreateSpace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_wRgqMasgk Now that you have this process, you don't have to write it down on a piece of paper or make extensive notes. Your entire tutorial is accessible anywhere you can access internet to get to YouTube. Access Robert's video tutorials at his YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe too. GoToWebinar: Use this software for setting up all of your webinars. WordPress Most all other things that Robert needs to accomplish in his business can be taken care of through WordPress and various WordPress plugins. He uses a plugin called Paper Template to create landing pages, opt-in pages, download pages, thank you pages, etc. He uses a WordPress plugin called Member Genius to take payments in combination with PayPal. Then, he uses a plugin called Backup Creator to back up his WordPress sites and if you back it up to another place (i.e. your hard drive, etc.), you've now cloned that site and you can use it over and over (with editing) to produce multiple sites. These are all plugin's that Robert has created and you can get all of them in one package by joining Income Machine today. Additional Software/Programs You'll Find Useful GoodSync: Developed by the same creators of RoboForm, it allows you to synchronize your folders with FTP websites, Dropbox or Amazon S3 buckets. Let's look at this scenario: When you record a video that you want to put online (like your membership site), first you have to record it, then you have to edit it, then you need to produce it and save it to a folder on your computer, then you would have to open up an FTP program (like FileZilla), then you have to drag the file over and wait for i...

Webinars are the best use of your time and the best way to make money. You've probably wondered out of all the things that you do, can you outsource some of that? Can you just be the creative person and do the few things that make the most amount of money? When we're talking about webinars, we're not talking about a Google HangOut or a YouTube video or a Periscope broadcast or anything "fancy." We're just talking about showing what's on your screen and saying what you're going to say in just 1 hour. It's that simple! What if you could turn whatever you're selling into a mini-launch event for a week? You could say, "On this Wednesday I am going to open the doors to my new course." Or, it could be your service, such as a package for consulting services on how to run your own business (i.e. set up sales funnels, etc.). You can put the description of your product/service that you're selling on your sales page. That's great if people read the entire thing but many of them won't and for some people, it can just be sort of dry and boring and they won't read it or at the least finish it. What can you do to compress all the different things about your product (or service) that you want to get across to people? You could make a video which makes it a little more entertaining to your audience. But, what if instead you take the points you were going to make in your sales letter and your video and make it into a one-hour live show, at a specific time and date. There's no showing of your face involved. Instead, you are showing the screen. It could be a web browser, a piece of software or a PowerPoint presentation. If you have a one hour webinar it takes you exactly one hour to create that and you make sales through that webinar. If you were going to make a 1-hr video that wasn't live, how many days would that actually take you? You'd probably be tempted to start adding a bunch of 'fancy' elements like graphics and music. There'd end up probably being too much scope creep in that and you would drive yourself crazy. Just get it on the calendar, show up and get it done and knock it out. Pitch Webinars You want to run a webinar when you have something for sale. That's the most important part. We don't want to run a webinar "just because." "Just because" includes teaching a big concept. For example, if you teach a one hour course on InfusionSoft and give them all these business ideas, you've created 2 situations: Either they're going to be confused about what to do with all the information with no way to apply it and/or they're going to go to your competitor to actually buy it because YOU didn't give them the option to buy right now. If someone wants to buy something, you want to give them the chance right then and there. What if you've got the idea but have not actually created the course yet? Then, in the sales letter you want to list all the things you're GOING to have and just put a future date of availability on it. That allows you to still sell it and then deliver it at a later date. To see what a sales letter looks like, go to WebinarCrusher.com. This is a way to also present to your webinar attendees that since everyone is starting it together at a set date, that you're "all in it together" and everyone's participation will shape the way that the course is created. Or, if you don't have a product created yet, you can go to www.clickbank.com (which is a huge site of affiliate listings) and see all of the products in your niche that you can promote as an affiliate. Then what you would do is have your website, set up the webinar in GoToWebinar (included with Webinar Crusher), and send out emails/invites to your list about your webinar. If you already have the product, you can look at the things that the sales letter talks about and think what sort of aspects you can make exciting for the attendees. What sort of cool demos can you do? Don't be afraid of webinars! People who show up for your presentation have already ma...

Most problems in Robert's business are not fixed by a crazy solution or a fancy piece of software. It's so easy to think that the reasons that you're not doing well or that you're not happy with your business is because you don't have one-click upsell, or because your website is not mobile-responsive, or your prices don't end in some magic number. It's tempting to think that everything that has been ailing us and our business can be fixed with a magic wand. But, usually it's something really simple. Usually when you get tripped up or stalled/delayed, etc., it's typically because of these reasons: Scope creep: you plan on something simple and the more you think about it, the bigger and more exciting it gets and before you know it, it's a huge beast of an undertaking and way more than what you intended. All of a sudden, you've gone from something that would take you one week to implement to an entire year. Procrastination: there are a small number of activities that WILL make us money and an unlimited amount of activities that will not make us money and it's a lot more fun to sit around and think about all the non-money making ideas instead of just starting work on an actual money-making idea. Distraction: letting yourself focus on a variety of things that keep you from our goal. For example, you might sit down in the morning to work on your e-book, but then you get an email about a product you must buy and next thing, you're reading about that product, buying that product, and hours have gone by. How do you actually stick to completing everything that you've started? Today, we're going to talk about a real system to get you through the things that trip you up. Journaling and Documenting Have a Checklist. If you don't have a checklist, you're going to miss important steps. For example, while recording and publishing this podcast, there are some steps that Robert has to go through each time. It may seem silly to have a checklist for something that seems easy or that you do "all the time", but it's easy to miss a step which could affect your outcome. Sometimes, when you do something over and over and achieve mastery on it, you will blow through it faster and faster and take it for granted which can result in being sloppy. Adhering to a checklist will keep that from happening. Most, if not all, of Robert and Lance's courses contain checklists. If you joined his podcast course, Podcast Crusher, there's a checklist for everything along the way, from setting up your first podcast to marketing your podcast and everything in between. They also do this with Webinar Crusher. There's sections on how to create our PowerPoint presentation, how to find attendees, running and recording the webinar, and post-broadcasting/remarketing. They have a checklist for each part. Google Calendar Google Calendar is great because if you have that master calendar you can easily see things, delete them, move them around, etc. You can have multiple calendars (such as a family calendar, a business calendar, etc.) and you can share these different calendars with different people, but the screen YOU are looking at has all the different calendars in one place, in different color codes. You can synchronize the calendar to your smartphones, tablets, etc. You can set it up to give you alerts/pop-ups. But, there are a few caveats about using calendars to be aware of: Appointments on the calendar are good until you start loading up to the point that when you look at today's agenda, there are 20 different things on it, which is entirely too overwhelming. This is also what happens with the "To-do list." It also sounds good in principle but the same thing happens with the overwhelming amount of tasks. It grows faster than you are able to complete anything! Some people swear by tools like Evernote, Dropbox, Gmail, etc. and if that works for you, great, but just in Robert's personal experience of meeting people who use these tools,

At one of the earliest internet marketing events Robert ever attended, he went to one of the Q&A panels. Usually, in these panels, people will have these really vague, generalized questions and in turn the speakers will have really "big", generalized responses, answers that don't really give any specific, overly helpful answers. During one of these, an attendee asked "Where can I get graphics made?" Join Graphic Dashboard to Claim Your Training, Templates, Affiliate Banner Ads & More Most speakers will answer with something like, "You can go to any one of these 10 sites", which isn't very helpful. At this particular one, a speaker, Ross Goldberg said: "You need to get graphics made. Is anyone in the audience a freelance graphics designer? Okay, during the break, go talk to each other. " Sometimes it really can be that easy. Ever since that moment, every time Robert listens to a podcast or reads a blog post, he looks for that one solution, pursues it and gleans from it what he needs instead of going down the learning "rabbit hole." He's heard a lot of struggling marketers talk about how much they've spent on "X" amount of courses over the last X amount of years. He thinks to himself, out of the 30 or 40 courses you bought, what was the best one? What did it teach you exactly that you implemented? Often, Robert talks about "The 4 Daily Tasks", the principle of taking 4 tasks a day at 3 tasks for 45 minutes each and 1 "gimme" task at 15 minutes. Why The Time Limits? Because no one actually puts in a 40-hr week. Even if you are paid on that basis, you still do things like: take long lunches, wait for the coffee to start, wait for the computer to boot up, talk to your coworker, etc. There's no point in committing to 8 hour days. What works better are focused spurts of productivity, actually putting something in place, actually implementing something that can bring you money. Checking your email, retweeting, Facebook posting, etc. should not count as one of your tasks. Sometimes, exceptions can be made if those activities can be proven to bring you traffic. So, what about grouping off of these activities together that are distractions and have it be the 15 minute task? It's all about the activities that you do. Since we're talking about activities that do or don't result in bringing you money, we're going to look at some of these today. A "7-Ways" Type of Book vs. A "7-Steps" Type of Book Unconscious incompetence: you don't know what you don't know. For example, you know what a sales letter is but you don't know any of the elements of one, such as how to add graphics, do code, build a webpage, write good copy with compelling bullet points, etc. Conscious incompetence: you realize that there are holes in your knowledge. You know what a sales letter is and you know all the elements to make a good one but you don't really know how to develop or implement them successfully. Conscious competence: you understand all the aspects and how to fix them. At this stage you might even understand some advanced aspects. Unconscious competence: now you're just the maestro. You just "know" how to do something without really thinking about it. You couldn't really tell someone how to do it because it's so easy for you and it's a smooth process. You don't even think about the steps anymore. In any situation, we want to get someone from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence. But it's very easy for us to overlook the newbie point of view especially if we're now masters at it. When you're making anything on any topic, and you're an expert at it, it's easy to show off your knowledge even though it may not be helpful and in some cases harmful. If you're teaching "7 Ways To Do...", you're giving people multiple "OR's" which can be really confusing for a beginner. You only want to do this as a way to "introduce" yourself to your audience. It should be something that is either free (like an opt-in "gift") or very low-ticket beca...

Whatever project you have going on, what would it take for you to complete, round out or get to the next milestone of that project today? Turn that project into a product. A project is something that you're just always tinkering away at, an ongoing venture that is never going to be completed. You need to complete it. Robert comes across so many people who have websites that aren't done and the reason why is usually pretty silly... "I need to have one-click upsell in place", or "I need to have this special thing in my member's area." Ask yourself: Is that really going to make a difference? Is the missing element really going to double your income? Is it worth delaying your income for X number of weeks? Or worse, is it ruining the potential to make income on that product at all? You can round-out what you have in the next 24 hours. What if you have an e-book that you planned to be 100 pages but you only had 10 pages completed? What if you just put that out there at this moment? Just about anything you put online, is re-doable. You can edit your sales letter later if you do an expanded version of the book. Psychologically, it's really important to have something out there right now for sale. Let's say you have a website with an information product about selling on eBay. You wanted to have a huge 12-part course but right now, you only had time to make 3 parts. Maybe then you edit your sales letter to remove the parts promising Parts 4-12. So, now, just for the time being, it is a ‘beginner' eBay course. Maybe your original intent was to make it $97 but now that it's a fractional part of the entire series that you can market as a Beginner course, you price it at $17. There is something very psychologically important about having at least something completed. Now, you just have to go back and complete the rest and edit your sales letter, if you feel like it. That's the entire basis of thinking behind Robert and Lance's program called Income Machine. "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" The plot of this children's book is that if you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk. If he drinks the glass of milk, he's going to want a napkin to wipe off his milk mustache. Then, he's going to need a mirror to make sure he's wiped it completely off. After looking in the mirror, he realizes he needs a haircut, so then he needs scissors. It's about how one silly thing can take you down a very long path where nothing is ever complete. The Promise A promise means that you live up to what you told your customer the product is about. Don't tell your audience that you're going to show them how to create a 5-Minute Video Sales Letter but then spend 90 minutes explaining it. You are going to confuse and frustrate them and lose their attention. Put yourself in the attendee's shoes. If you "promise" to show them a video sales letter, they want to know what that is. They don't need to know every technical detail. How To Rise Above Being A Geek Being a geek is not just about being a techie who knows A-Z about computers. Instead, it's about being so detailed and over-inclusive of every tiny factor that you exhaust your audience. How do you avoid doing this? #1: Avoid the "OR" as much as possible. Don't give your audience an endless list of choices. If you're teaching a class on podcasting, don't give them a list of 5 microphones they can use. Tell them the one that you personally use. If you do that for every single step of your presentation/course, your customer is going to be more confused than when they started. That's why in their Podcast Crusher course, and their Make A Product course, Robert and Lance say, "Use this one piece of software and you can get fancy later if you want." They're only going to give you one solution for each step. #2: Tell Your Customer What They Can Do With the Finished Course/Product Going back to the video sales letter, show the customer how it is used successfully.

An action-packed 50th Episode Anniversary Special with 50 Game Changing Internet Marketing and Online Business Breakthroughs from 37 Mentors... Four Daily Tasks You need to be completing 4 Daily Tasks. Before he realized this, Robert would have days where he'd knock out 20 or 30 tasks and then weeks would go by where he was burnt out and couldn't get the motivation to get anything done. As soon as he realized the 4 Daily Tasks Principle, things really changed for him. Today, of all the things you need to do, think about the 4 most important: Send out emails Run pitch webinars Set up sales letters Set up "buy buttons" Contact affiliates to promote our products Of all of those things, what is going to move you along the path of making money TODAY? That's where you should be concentrating. On a weekday, you want to do (3) 45-minute tasks and (1) 15-minute task. On a weekend, do (4) 5-minute tasks. For more info, check out Robert's book called Four Daily Tasks. List, Traffic and Offers Everything you do in your online business goes to one of these 3 categories: list, traffic, or offers. If it's not, it's probably not making you any money which means it's not essential. List: building your list or sending emails to your list Traffic: doing ads, blog articles for SEO, podcasts for SEO, working with your affiliates to drive more traffic to your site (p.s. all of this is also building your list). Offers: information products, iPhone apps, coaching programs, affiliate links that you promote. Of all the things you could do today, you want to do something that meets at least one of these aspects as part of your 4 daily tasks. It's easy to get caught up in what you should do first, the "chicken or the egg" syndrome. Robert's program, Income Machine can help with this. It shows you how to fill up the list, traffic and offers by still only completing 4 daily tasks. It shows you the 8 things to set up to satisfy having a good list, having decent traffic and having at least 1 or 2 offers for someone to buy. What you'll discover: How to choose a niche How to set up a website How to set up an Opt-In page How to set up an email follow-up sequence How to set up a blog, How to write a sales letter How to start a membership site How to drive traffic to your sites Check out Robert's book called List, Traffic, and Offers. And, now for 50 Great Business Lessons from Robert's Mentors... Mechanics, Marketing, Business, Branding and Strategy Allen Says: If you just have a sales letter, a payment button, a download page and a short report solving a problem, that's all you need to get started. Robert has started a lot of auto-pilot business just from having these 4 simple components. Gary Ambrose: One person CAN do everything. Gary is one of the first people Robert ever joint ventured with. Lance Tamashiro: A big result can be too scary for potential buyers. Go for a small achievable results in a short amount of time. Lance is Robert's business partner. Gary Ambrose: It's all about the Joint Venture. It's better to have an okay product with a lot of great affiliates and traffic rather than a spectacular product with no affiliates. This does not mean to put out bad products, but there is a point where it's good enough and it's more important to have good marketing than a perfect product and average marketing. Armand Morin: Double your prices. It sounds scary but all you need to do is edit a number on a website. If you want to make 10x your income, are you going to build up your list by that much or are you going to charge more? Josh Anderson: If you're making a newbie product, the budget for that is $100. That's a price point that doesn't hurt much for anyone that's new to a niche.Once you've done that, you can think about what else you could include in that $100 product and that is your upsell. Eric Louviere: Create a technology or a term that's more than a thing that already exists.

Like the Robert Plank Show on Facebook Having a membership site is the best option for recurring revenue on your products. Say that you have something for sale, usually a course, and you want to know how to get the best "bang for your buck" on monetizing that product. Join Our Webinar Crusher Program Today You could write a report or an e-book but there's a few problems with that. A Kindle book might only get you revenues of 99 cents each copy sold. A regular book might sell for $10 but after publishing and other costs, you will only net approximately a $1 on each copy. If you're lucky, you will make that wonderful $10K but ONLY ONCE and in the meantime, you had to wait for 2 years of making no money on it and the information could be ‘dated' by the time of release. Besides, who wants to read a book on how to get a podcast or book published or how to get site traffic, etc.? People want answers NOW. Wouldn't it be more helpful if you showed someone on video how to do it? If you record a series of videos on how to solve someone's problem, it's easy to justify charging $100-$1000 for that course that will bring them from start to finish. A Quick Intro on Membership Sites A membership site is where someone can become a member of yours for free or for payment... For example, Facebook, Twitter, and Ebay are all membership sites. Why? Because you sign up once and you have access to that site forever for as often as you want/need. Netflix is also a membership site. This is one that you pay for. You can have this membership site that can be free, or someone pays one time for access, or they can pay multiple times. It doesn't make sense to randomly sell your video/video series all over the internet. It's a lot easier to manage your video content when you put it on to a membership site. Membership Sites and Payment Options "I want to have a membership site but I just don't know what I can sell for $100 a month over and over again" is where a lot of people get stuck. It's not necessarily about someone paying you month after month into infinity. Let's do a quick exercise: take a piece of paper and write $997. If you sold a $997 package on real estate, what would that contain? The # of pages and the # of hours of video is just clutter. What you're really talking about is the VALUE of what you're giving them. What is their end result that is going to justify the $997 program price? For example, show them how to get their realtor's license, how to flip a property, how to buy and rent a property/become a landlord, etc. Then you put it into video format so they can go at their own pace. You can do additional valuable things like offer them milestone assignments, provide them with your "swipe file", provide them with checklists and templates, ship them a printed manual via Lulu (www.lulu.com) and/or give them access to next 6 monthly group calls. Then, figure out how many of these $997 packages you would have to sell per month to meet your income goals. If you wanted to make $10K per month, that would be 10 sales or 1 every 3 days. Here's where the fun comes in. If you take that $1000 course and split it into (4) $250 payments or (8) $125 payments, that opens you up to people that have that money in installments but didn't have it one lump sum and that's a cool place because you've just opened the door to a much larger segment of the market, which in turn could result in significantly more than the $10K a month goal. If you're ever worried about the price that you charge, look at your competitors. You don't want to compete on price. You don't want to the Kmart of your niche. You want to be at their price point or slightly higher. You want to be in a niche where there are a lot of eager, hungry, wealthy buyers. If you haven't done a membership site yet because it's scary, then you don't know what's important and what's not or what's going to work for your part of the market, your ‘niche'.

Remember this: Your customers get trained to open your emails. Your customers get trained to buy from you. Your customers get trained to attend your webinars. Whoever has the biggest email list wins. Facebook and Twitter followers are not that list. Think about that for a second. You can post all day but who has the biggest list in the world? Facebook. When you're on Facebook, don't you receive emails from them AT LEAST weekly? Even if a customer opens your website or followers check out your Facebook page, all of the most popular sites (Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram) use email lists too. "It worked so well, I stopped doing it." In other words, don't neglect your list. When we first start out doing something, sometimes it goes so well that we get lazy and we backslide. Then, we start losing income and we have to work twice as hard to get to where we were. Numbers, Numbers, Numbers A lot of people are shooting for the wrong kind of numbers... It's not a big achievement to say you have a 0% refund rate if your website says absolutely no refunds and you spend your time ineffectively arguing with customers over $5 and $10 transactions. Don't waste your time moving people from one list to another to achieve a "false" click-thru rate: Say you have a list of 10k subscribers. Many people send out an email saying something like, "I have a new course coming up soon and I don't want you to get bombarded" so "instead, I want you to go join this other list to be on the exclusive XYZ launch list." They'll send their subscribers to that new list to sign up for the launch. Let's say out of your 10k subscribers only 100 sign up on the new list. That's a really small amount... When they announce the launch, 80 of those 100 click on it and they have an 80% click thru rate. In reality, your total interested subscribers are really only less than 1%. It's a lot of unnecessary steps. A better use of your marketing is to get 100 new subscribers per day to your EXISTING list. How? Add some exciting content to your blog, like videos. Then, on the sidebar, you say something like "if you want to get exclusive articles, sign up here" and then you create the opt-in page where you offer a free report of your best few pieces of content. Now, you have additional potential customers on your list. The service you use for this is called AWeber. AWeber is a permission-based (i.e. your customers "opted in") email marketing system... $1 Dollar Visitor Value This means that when you average everything out, when someone lands on your webpage, you want that visit to be worth $1. If you're selling something for $100 you want that to convert at 1% to equal $1. If 100 people go to your webpage and you have a $100 product you want at least 1 buyer for that $100 product. That's why you want 10k subscribers, at a minimum, so if you have a $1 per visitor value you still make that $10k per month. Daily 1% List Decay Your email list is going to decay every day by 1%. If you have a list of 10k people, you can expect to lose 100 people per day. At first, that goal of adding 100 people a day we talked about earlier sounds like a lot, but at some point it will level off in that if you're losing 100 people per day but you're gaining people at 100 per day you are still at a net list of 10k. Expect a 2% click thru rate list-wide. That means if you have 10,000 subscribers, expect 200 people to click thru when you send an email. If you have a $100 product for sale that is moving, then you can expect at least $200 a day in sales just from 2 people at a product that's $100 each purchase. Then, if you email your list about the same product for the next 5-7 days in a row, the rate of clicks remain about the same. At a 2% click through rate, if you sent out 10 emails on that same product, you could expect to get 20% of that list to buy. That would be 200 net people for sales of $2000. This can really add up.

Don't be another statistic! Run your online business model, product, and sales letter through "The Mom Test" to discover how to sell faster and easier without resorting to painful "copywriting" or piling a lot of extra money into your business. It'll simplify your internet marketing... Bad situation: A lot of internet marketers too caught up in ‘jargon’ and reinventing terms for concepts that already existed + a lot of people not wanting to look stupid and admit that they don’t know what something is = missed sales . Too many marketers get too involved in making simple concepts difficult OR they are so vague and oversimplified that they sound ‘sketchy’. Your marketing should ideally be able to pass "The Mom Test"... Piece #1: Can You Explain What It Is That You’re Doing Online In A Way That Your Mom Could Understand It? In other words, can you explain it to someone who isn’t "stupid" but is not necessarily internet-savvy and has zero interest in "internet tech stuff." Piece #2: Are You Solving A Real Problem? Figure out what people want to know and where they are personally stuck and how you can help them. Example: Your niche is the stock market. Most people just want to know how to get started, how to trade some simple stocks. They want to learn how to buy a stock, read the stock quotes and make some return on their investment. They don't need to know the inner workings of Wall Street. THAT is not a real problem you are solving. Piece #3: Can You Explain It In Less Than One Minute Or In One Sentence? Just "state the facts." Uber is a good example. Instead of saying, "I am a freelancer for a website that facilities transportation and is in direct competition with more traditional ways of hiring drivers for important events", etc., you would say, "Uber is a Peer to peer taxi service that costs less than traditional taxi service." Piece #4: Do You Have A Physical Item? Tangible items tend to lend credibility, especially to people who are unfamiliar with internet technology and feel that they need to see and touch something for it to be legitimate. Let’s say that everything you have for sale is 100% online and is in the form of digital downloads. You can put this internet-based digital information (ex: a 4-module course) on a physical product like a DVD and puts it with a service called Kunaki. Robert uses Sony DVD Architect to create the DVD and Kunaki is company that specializes in DVD replication, packaging and distribution. Another option: take several of your blog posts, cut and paste them into Word and then turn those into an e-book. Go to Amazon KDP to create a Kindle format version of your book, and CreateSpace to create physical/printed copies of your book. Robert's course, Make a Product, has a lot more information for you on how to publish your own e-book in less than 24 hours. Go check it out! Piece #5: Is This Something That Can Change A Life Within 1 To 30 Days? If it takes longer than 30 days it’s not exciting and you’re probably not doing a very good job marketing. You need to have a set goal in mind of what your customer is going to achieve or will have been able to produce, as a result of their learning from you, WITHIN 30 days. Will they be able to play guitar? Will they have their own membership site up and running? Closing Thoughts The average person, whether they’re a mom or not, does not understand a lot of the "technical stuff" and think that everyone on the internet is a "crazy new start-up." This is not about having an elevator pitch or a customer avatar. This is about explaining things in real, simple language and understanding that just because something might be exciting to you or seem simple to you, it might be going over your customers’ heads. Play it safe and dumb it down. Ask your list and get feedback. Probably 80% of your list thinks that you’re too advanced. Newbies are going to outnumber experts. The things that are going to keep bringing in leads are your simple t...

No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you're still way ahead of anyone who isn't trying. Very few marketers even make the effort of doing Thank You cards. Should this be part of your everyday routine? Are there tasks that are a "better" use of your time? Maybe. But, what if, no matter what niche you're in, you just singled out 4 random customers today and just jotted down 4 quick Thank You's? It would take just a few minutes out of your day but put you way ahead of the curve. You just want to thank your customers for buying from you. There's no "sell", no discount and no hustle. You are just thanking them for their business. They are part of your success. Here are your tools for "Thank You" productivity... Thank-You Tool #1: WPKunaki On Robert and Lance's website, MembershipCube.com, as well as their other membership sites, they use a plug-in called WPKunaki, which is an address collector. When someone joins their membership site, the plug-in pops up and asks for their mailing address and runs it through the address validator. Lance would be really crazy not to be collecting addresses. It's nice to have it on hand. He can use it for Thank You cards, he can use it to send them webinar or DVD copies as just a quick bonus. He can also use it for geographics to target customers later for Facebook ads. Thank-You Tool #2: Phone Calls Sometimes Lance will even call them on the phone. If someone just bought a $7 e-book from you, they're not expecting anything at all, not even an auto-responder-generated email. So, if you make that call, you're way ahead of anyone else. If someone bought from you and you contact them the same day, they are going to just be happy and not have any complaints. Thank-You Tool #3: Send Out Cards This is a service that will allow you to send traditional cards to your customers. These are NOT electronic cards. They are "paper" cards like you would get at the store so they are very personal, not "mass e-mailed" and they won't go to your customer's spam folder or look like another sales push. There are also gift options within the Send Out Cards system that you can send to your customer as well. To learn more about how Send Out Cards can help you personalize your relationships with your customers, go to DoubleAgentCards.com. Thank-You Tool #4: Google Drive If you have a Gmail account, you also have a drive account. If you don't already have one, go get one. It's free. You can create any doc and have it be in your Google Drive, where you can now access it from anywhere. A good idea here is to keep a journal of different contacts/activities that have with your customers. Here is where you can keep a journal of the Thank You cards that you send out. "Cheesy" Marketing You want to stay away from cheesy marketing. Many marketers tell you to look up today's holiday and give your customers a "special discount" for that day (example: a "Boxing Day" discount) or to look up your customers' birthdays market to them on their birthdays. It sounds like a good idea but all these marketers who teach this have never personally marketed to me on in this way. They've really just posted an occasional sale here and there when they're probably running low in their bank account. It makes more sense to just sell what you sell and be consistent. You don't have to have sales all the time if you're thanking your customers for being there. The 1-4-15-80 Rule This is an important concept that Robert talks about in his program Double Agent Marketing and its accompanying book. It's how your list is broken down: About 1% will buy everything you put out. 4% will buy most of your stuff. 15% won't always buy high-ticket items but they will probably buy things where they can do a payment plan. Then, your last 80% will probably not buy anything products/services over $20. If that disappoints you, you can build a bigger list OR you can take better care of your list.