Advice - Ask/Tell All - from OG marketer/entr. - Top 10 at CB - Back for good karma

Hey cool - I figured I'd run into old affiliates Thank you for your help during our incline campaigns.

At least you're aware, and the markets tend to educate themselves faster and faster but yeah I'm still seeing a lot of fake'n'bake'till'u'make'it personalities. Years and years on a forum doesn't necessarily get you success and people with 22,000+ posts don't necessarily have your best interest at heart.

Those are two totally different worlds often used for very specific sequences (squeeze page > email > autoresponder > drip them offers/upsell/etc. - Blog > can be anything).

Also depends on if you're moving units of your own stuff vs affiliating for others vs just flipping adzones vs aggregating emails vs...... You've asked a question that has no right or wrong answers, I've had success with both for their specific use as have tons of my affiliates.

What does your blog do? Sell stuff? Review stuff? You're trying to rank for hard keys/flip peoples offers? You have banners/adzones with adsense? You have videos that are yours that have ads on them on youtube embedded??

Yep - make your .com your squeeze page until you are ready - and still get at least SOME content ready so your list doesn't go cold as fast as you build it (meaning send them some stuff even if you haven't launched, and don't sell or try to promote anything yet, no aff links no asking for money just keep them warm/enticed in your biz/idea/venture).

Keywords :: Yep you've got a one page static laser focused objective - SEO doesn't really come into play on simple static pages and are usually best focused on with previous lists or swapping lists or other email exercises. You won't be able to gain much traction unless you a) create your own keyword(s) so they are easy to rank for (i.e. dubturbo was a new word never really used before), b) influence your SEO with all kinds of google dances on purpose knowing it will be a throw away campaign maybe on another domain promoting yours so if it's penalized your money site isn't... There is no real way to ensure organic traffic to a squeeze page you'll heavily rely on marketing it to end users and list owners imo (unless your idea is in a new niche/keyword and just takes off due to its hook).

Once you launch your squeeze page can still be there as a separate page, and your blog will probably have an optin area somewhere on every page so you should focus on your content being top shelf.

Be controversial with your content, don't be bland, don't be dry, use every word/sentence/picture with purpose to retain readers and build a fanbase that promotes you vs you constantly trying to look for more backlinks etc.

Best of luck with it.

I've done at least 40, up to 50, and they would break down as follows:

20 died and were horrible ideas that didn't make a return/total loss.
10 did something right, a little spike, some money and lot's of knowledge.
5-7 did very well, lasted longer than a spike, rolled onto the next one, had a big back end and other branches grew from them etc.
1 changed my life and took off farther/faster than I ever realized was possible - now anything is possible in my eyes, 100million is not that crazy sounding anymore.

There is absolutely no sequence that is guaranteed re a launch - there are only past proven models and common models that tend to work when combined properly.

If I were to be launching something next month and it had never seen the market yet, and it's in a relatively new micro niche that I am a domain expert in, here's what I would do:

Create the sales page first, start split testing on small price-points for pre-orders. If I can't even get pre-orders I don't proceed. If I get orders or pre-orders (orders being straight sales but then telling customers if they didn't read the fine print this is for next month and if they want to refund that's fine, I only care about figuring out my conversion rate ranges and if the market will even respond to my idea/offer).

Once I prove the space/idea even on a small sample of say 20-50 orders on a >1% conversion rate - I motor on creating my product. I start leaking the info to my existing affiliates because I've done so many of these I have resources to pull from. If you don't have affiliates and haven't had proven success to recruit with easily, do NOT recruit until you prove the model more and have viable marketing material that proved profitable (aka pretend you're your own affiliate re numbers and do an actual campaign and figure out if you were profitable on a xx% commission, if you can pre-qualify yourself as a profitable affiliate and document that to show the ones you will soon recruit, you're sitting on a potential huge winner.

Depending on the niche and how I'm going to do my launch, the rest of the usual suspects apply re getting list owners hyped up, getting competitors shaken up/try to work with them even, to preparing a TON of marketing materials following your proven tests to give to affiliates that will soon be knocking on your door vs you having to recruit them to a cold unproven offer.

I don't play in 'marketing to marketers' spaces so the launch process is different and the psychology of your demo is very different so there are many things I did that wouldn't apply to most others products as I am in the music production niche.

Here's the most important part - post launch.

See - most marketers that came up with me - did what I did - launch after launch after launch always thinking two products ahead. Not realizing that it's much smarter and a much more rewarding journey if you can build a sustainable brand and be in launch mode for 4-5 years on one project/brand vs spike money x times a year and having to chase new ideas/packaging the same shite in different ways/trying to stay in the black...

If you can create something that outgrows you, and where affiliates become attracted organically because you've found a gap to fill or something new that is becoming hot - then and only then will you realize the difference between a 6-7 figure mmo launch (and crazy retention strategies from all the refunds you're about to cap out servicing on), and an actual long term lifecycle of something beautiful that is duplicated because it's so good, that affiliates fight for, that the backend grows insanely for over time, that justifies doing a residual monthly upsell which feeds you for years even if your front end dies and you restructure..

I rambled a bit sorry - launching something so it sticks is hard. I USED TO have this false feeling of 'anything I touch now will turn into gold because I've 'won' quite a few times in big ways now'... and even I have had to realize that what happened to me was extra special, not something you can sequence or plan for, lot's of karma/timing/people/unforeseens that throw your biz plan out the window and it is insanely hard to duplicate. If you DO find yourself sitting on a winner, stop - don't think two products ahead - think of how to absolutely maximize your opportunity and upsell/build residual components as fast as possible.

Cheers!

Yeah I took NicheChoppers down a while ago it kept getting hacked and it was just time for it to go as it did what it was supposed to do for a lot of people before drying out.. I thought it was you as I replied - equally long and filled with overall advice

EDIT: I'm going to post some of it here, the general parts so others can take from it too:

I didn't click on everything however I've seen this time and time again - portfolio's of fails/learning curve footprints .

Most important thing I would do is sit back and take inventory of your skill sets, seems like you've championed the technical side of things and can pretty much execute anything. Which in turn allows you to execute everything you think of and run dry on new idea chases..

When I was looking after my portfolio of both winners and losers, it wasn't a choice I made as much as my path pulling me into 'drop everything, focus on your winner stupid!' position.

I couldn't tell you to drop everything, but I can tell you that you definitely would be better served with focusing one - three things TOPS and seeing them through. Often times success is right there around the corner just have to keep pushing to actually get to the end of the street.

At the same time you should absolutely acknowledge when something isn't working and be 100000% ready to walk away from it without any emotion or second thoughts, money pits and failed ideas can kill peoples life savings.

You don't have to outsource much if anything, you write really well so there's your content and marketing development taken care of, you can deploy any idea you think of (don't do PLR, don't do things that have been done 10001 times by people with budgets).

Stay away from trying to teach others how to make money online if you haven't hit big yet - it's a catch22 and 99% of this forum does this - it's backwards. If you really do make big money online trust me the last thing you'll do is want to capitalize off sharing that knowledge - it becomes industry secrets and then eventually you made it big and want to give back like I'm doing here for free .

In short = Keep doing stuff, fail faster, don't just jump into ideas do actual analysis and take into account your own history with project dev and how you usually end up. I now say no to 90% of ideas I have and 99% of ideas that are presented to me by potential partners. Taking on a project should only be done as a calculated risk not idiotic compassion for the niche or desire to get rich quick. Think of something you're amazing at and can stick to for years as well because if something you create DOES hit it big, you'll be stuck to it for a long time. I've been in niches where the money is amazing but the niche is dirty or feels wrong and the money doesn't matter you just want out.

Hope you can pull from this and whatever you do just keep throwing jam at that wall, averaging and probability also takes effect so sooner or later something kinda 'has to' hit it's just how long can you holdout and how great can you become in that process (I often preach this :: Fall in love with the process first, the money is just a cool side effect of a powerful daily routine). Seems you do in fact love the process, just have to refocus it on bigger hits and less of them vs tons of small attempts at shiny lures.


Cheers,
Norb.

How long is a string? Sorry - way too broad of a question as there's 1001 ways to make money online and doing a general tips for newbie's in any of them wouldn't do it justice.

Yes, however when you have money are you still going to try to make more without investing into automation/scaling/labor/outsourcing/etc? Making SOME money with your efforts/talents/skills in order to GET some capital is the way it usually goes. Once you have income you're hopefully going to know what to do with it in order to make it grow more.

Let me flip the question on you = If I gave you $10,000 right now to help with your project, could you flip that into $11,000 - $20,000 or do you see yourself losing it trying to flip it?

Yes it's important, it's a branch of your marketing tree - it's not the core or the roots of it though. Your brand is your core, SEO, AM, M, PR, Social, etc. are all arms and all have equal % until you find out what works best for your offer and scale on that. There is no set way/thing to focus on in an online business everything matters and your eb/flow will always randomly change (you will google dance one week/month, and get some random great backlinks next month, and do some great SEO content for words you never thought to rank that are now bringing in buyers the next month, etc., can't say 'my SEO is great so I'm banking' by default.

Yes in many many many ways. I was a designer/producer/mediawhore for 12 years before doing my own brands, and during my come up I did just about everything you can think of to test my offers with little to no budget. It's the best way to test because if you hit on grass roots campaigns imagine what you could do with a budget behind that knowledge. In my post above I talk about building out a salespage before you even have your product, that is probably my most effective method of testing without having to build out anything yet or even knowing if the market will respond favorably.

Still though, having said that - there is nothing faster and better than knowing your audience and getting warm targeted traffic to your offer to test it - adwords up to $1/click if you have to but you'll get the fastest results that way (at least in my experience).