If you decide you’re going to do something, do it.
They’ve done dozens of studies over the years and they’ve found there is one major difference between successful people and unsuccessful people:
Successful people launch.
They get started.
They get on with it.
They just do it.
Unsuccessful people get the same ideas and the same information, but they’ve always got an excuse for not starting.
Let’s be candid – You can discover these outsourcing secrets the easy way or the hard way, but you’re going to find this out sooner or later.
The hard way is the way most marketers do it. They make mistakes when outsourcing, lose time and/or money, and then learn from their mistakes.
I propose we cut out all that nonsense and I’ll just tell you what you need to know here and now. Ready?
1: Outsource customer service as soon as humanly possible.
Reason why: If you don’t, you’ll waste half of each day doing things like answering support tickets, changing email addresses for members who changed their email address (yes, that is a thing) issuing refunds, answering questions and so forth.
That is time you could spend doing something else like… let’s see… wait, I know – MAKING MONEY.
Your focus should be on building your business, not answering support tickets (“When I log in, I see a funny thing at the top that says I’m logged in… is that what it’s supposed to say?”) I’m not kidding, that is a real support ticket I once received.
Another reason why: Your virtual assistant who is handling your support can shield you from the negative ninnies. What’s a “negative ninny,” you ask? It’s that person who buys your product and then rants on for 6 pages on how awful your product is, how awful you are and so forth. You don’t need to hear that stuff. Just tell your V.A. to handle it for you without ever telling you about it. (In this case, refunding the person and removing them from every list is all that’s required.)
And by the way, if you’re thinking that your products will be so great, everyone will love them, well then I know you haven’t created any products yet.
I don’t care if you invent the method for turning pixels into gold, someone will hate it. And that’s okay, as long as you don’t have to hear about it.
2: Outsource the things that bring you profit FIRST.
So let’s say you want to outsource website building, content creation, product creation, sales writing, software creation and so forth.
Ask yourself this question: What’s going to bring me the fastest return on my money?
That’s the project to outsource first.
Maybe you pay someone to create a product for you, and then you turn around and sell that product to hundreds of buyers. BOOM! You’ve just made your money back and much more.
But what if you don’t have any customers yet? And no list? Then maybe you need to outsource the building of your squeeze page so you can start list building so you can start selling stuff to your list.
Whatever will put you in profit first is the thing you need to outsource first. This way you are not coming out of pocket by thousands and thousands of dollars without a return.
3: Pay outsources based on the JOB, not by an hourly rate.
You want to know going in what it’s going to cost you to get a specific job done. And a true professional will be able to tell you exactly what it will cost.
A lot of marketers make the mistake of paying by the hour to get a job done. So not only don’t they know exactly what the job will cost – they also don’t know if the outsourcer is dragging the job out longer to make it pay more. Yes, it’s been known to happen.
The exception to the non-hourly rule?
Your virtual assistant or customer service person. Because of the nature of their work, in most cases paying them by the hour is the way to go.
4: Outsource work you’re putting off.
Did you create a new product, but you haven’t edited yet? Or maybe you haven’t built the website or made the sales letter.
All the time you invested in creating that product is going to waste. Outsource someone to do what you haven’t done, so you can get it online and start making sales ASAP.
5: Outsource what you’re not good at, and what you don’t like doing.
Sure, you love building websites, but let’s face it: You haven’t updated your website skills since 2007. Or you know how to write sales copy, but you HATE doing it.
Those are things you should be outsourcing. By focusing on your strengths as well as strategically planning your business, and letting other experts handle the rest of the work, you’ll make more money faster than if you try to do everything yourself.
6: Outsource the instrument playing while you conduct the orchestra.
There may come a time very soon when you have a system in place for making money. It could be as simple as creating a product in your niche, write several pieces of content preparing people for the product, record several videos leading up to the launch, and then launching.
Yet all of that is a lot of work. You’ve got sales copy to write, JV’s to contact, swipe emails to write, etc.
If you can afford it, outsource everything you can so that you can focus on working ON your business instead of IN your business.
People who focus on working on their business while outsourcing a lion’s share of the work tend to make 5 to 10 times as much money as those who work in their business.
Sort of a no-brainer, don’t you think?
7: If you haven’t yet outsourced something – what are you waiting for?
If you already have an online business, or you’re in the process of building one and you haven’t yet outsourced something, odds are it’s simply because fear is holding you back.
Go to Fiverr, Upwork, Craigslist or Warrior and outsource a small job, just to see how it works. I promise, you’ll be hooked and your business will grow twice as fast.
There is not a seven-figure internet marketer out there who doesn’t outsource. So isn’t it about time you did, too?
You read a book and a week later you hardly remember a thing.
You watch a video and a day later it’s lost from your memory…
The fix? Always write down your three biggest takeaways from anything nonfiction that you read or watch.
Keep a notebook or file just for this purpose. Review it often. And put those three things to work in your life as soon as you possibly can.
The world’s wisdom and secrets is at your fingertips inside books old and new. Many of the world’s greatest teachers and successful people share their secrets and strategies inside the pages of a book.
When you read for learning, you are only moments away from discovering some new information that can change the course of your life in new and better directions.
But you must take action.
And you must REMEMBER the insights that really matter.
Read to learn and grow, and remember to write down your three biggest takeaways from each session, and then take action on what you are learning so that it becomes internalized wisdom.
Start doing this, and every day can be a better day as you absorb the knowledge of the happiest, healthiest and wealthiest people in the world, and incorporate it into your life so that you can be one of them too! Then write your own book for other people to remember! 🙂
Work expands to fill the time allotted – and even more time beyond that – if you don’t have a hard deadline. Thus, if you make it a goal to finish your new ebook in 3 months, at the 3 month mark you’ll either just be finishing, or worse yet you’ll realize you’re only halfway done. If, however, you had a hard launch date, then you’ll have the book ready. Deadlines are a magnificent thing – they give you permission to ignore the email, ignore Facebook, turn the phone off, tear yourself away from the video games and television and actually get your work done.
So how can you create a product in a short amount of time? By doing two things:
First, set a deadline that is almost impossibly close, such as 10 days from right now.
Second, hold yourself accountable on a massive scale. That is, call up your best marketing buddy and schedule a live webinar with him or her to sell your new product. Now promote the webinar heavily.
Guess what? For the next 10 days you’re going to move heaven and earth to get your product finished for that webinar, and on Day 11 you are going to party!
First, you’re going to be celebrating the sales you made on the webinar.
Second, you’re going to be looking forward to all the sales you will make in the future with your new product. In fact, you’re going to take the momentum that webinar created and use it to contact other marketers and set up more live webinars for their lists.
Third, you are going to feel fantastic. That new product that you thought would take 3 months of your life only took 10 days!
Fourth, you’ve now got a system for not only getting products done fast, but also getting your first sales the moment the product is completed for an immediate payoff.
How great is that?!
Short and sweet: If you’re making good money coaching others to do or accomplish something, then you can probably double the money you make without much effort.
It’s sort of a recycle and reuse kind of thing, where nothing in your business goes to waste.
Let’s say you spend time coaching people on how to start their own businesses. You show them the sequence, how to get things done, how to outsource, the shortcuts, the little things they need to know and so forth.
But consider this: There are other marketers who want to get paid for coaching, too. Except they don’t know where to start or what to do.
So you also coach other marketers on how to do coaching.
You let them in on all your secrets of how to get clients, how to work with clients, how the whole process works and so forth.
I suppose you could even let them listen in on your coaching calls. If you do, you need to let your students know someone else is on the line.
And whatever you’re charging your regular coaching clients, you can probably about double for your new students who are learning how to become coaches. Again, it’s up to you.
You’ve got a skill – coaching – that others want to have. So why not become a coach’s coach?
You can give your future coaches templates for their sales pages, techniques for getting their first clients and ongoing support. And for this you can easily charge $5,000.
Even if you just take on two new students a month who are learning to be coaches, that’s an extra $120,000 a year.
I mentioned this to a friend, and he’s a bit snarky. He wanted to know, “If you’re coaching students, and you’re coaching coaches on how to coach students, couldn’t you also coach people on how to train new coaches that teach coaching?”
Actually, yes. But that might be taking things a bit far. 😉
You already know all about scarcity. The scarcer something is, the more people want it.
That’s why we use deadlines to entice customers to buy. Without the deadlines, people would put it off and then forget about it.
For decades savvy store owners have used this trick. By limiting the number of items a person can purchase, they increase the number of items sold.
But I wonder – are we using this to maximum advantage online? Yes, we sometimes limit the number of copies sold. Yes, we use deadlines and then promise not to sell any more after that deadline.
But what if we used it in a slightly different way…
Imagine you have different levels of participation in a product launch.
For example: You will sell only 10 copies at $2,500 each that includes actual coaching and one-on-one time with you for 12 weeks.
You’ll sell only 100 copies at $1,000 that includes group coaching for 12 weeks.
You’ll sell 200 copies at $500 that includes the “done for you option,” which is also included in the higher levels, too. But there is no coaching at this level.
And you’ll sell 1,000 copies that don’t include coaching or the done for you option.
Then you place counters on your site that tell how many copies of each have sold.
Yes, this will take some guts. After all, what if something doesn’t sell? But that’s also the fascination factor, too.
People will continue to revisit the page just to see what’s selling.
And what happens when there are only 6 or 5 or 4 copies left of the highest option? Suddenly they’ll start selling FASTER.
The last copy or two will likely FLY off the shelf.
You’re adding a new brand of scarcity, a higher level of fascination and interest and accommodating people’s needs.
You might think of this as a new way of upselling, or a more transparent method than using one time offers. It’s up front, honest, and lets people decide ahead of time what they want.
And if they don’t act fast enough, they will miss out, too.
What’s the easiest way to make money online, without having to create a product or a sales page? Affiliate marketing, of course. 🙂
So, why is it that most affiliate marketers never make nearly what they could make? Anyone has the potential to make HUGE money in affiliate marketing, yet 90% or more of affiliates make a pittance (I’ll wager the number is closer to 98%, in fact.)
Think about this: If you earn an average of $50 on each sale in a sales funnel you promote, and you make 6 sales, you’ve made $300. Sounds good, right?
But guaranteed, there is someone else who made 600 sales and walked away with $30,000.
Why did they make 600 sales when you made just 6?
There are reasons why a handful of affiliate marketers do amazingly well, and everyone else barely makes a profit.
And marketers who understand this will always have a tremendous advantage over marketers who don’t.
1: Build a Relationship
I know you’ve heard it before, but are you doing it? People buy people, not products.
If you want them to open your email and click your link, or visit your Facebook Group and click a link, you’ve got to have a RELATIONSHIP with your people.
This is so simple to do, yet few marketers take the time.
Start with a blog post that is all about you, and then send new opt-ins to the post so they can get to know you. Make the post silly, funny and most of all REAL. Talk about the stupid stuff you’ve done, the mistakes you’ve made, where you live and so forth.
Do you have a strange hobby or unusual taste in food? Include that. Do you have 17 pets? Talk about them. Do you work until 3 in the morning and sleep until noon? Mention that.
Reveal the real you. Not the details people don’t want, but the ones that amuse and interest. You’re looking to make a real connection, not give a resume.
And above all else, don’t make your life seem like a series of magnificent accomplishments. No one is going to relate to someone who turns everything they touch into gold.
But they are going to relate to the time you bought Bitcoin when it was worthless and sold it just before it took off, or the time you thought you could fly and jumped off your uncle’s barn into the manure pile.
And don’t stop with your ‘about me’ page, either. Use this relationship building in your lead magnet, your emails, your other blog posts and so forth.
Always inject a little bit about yourself. Not so much that you bore people, of course, or make everything seem about you. But just enough to keep it real.
Think about relating an event to a friend. Aren’t you going to give your own perceptions of what happened, as well as tell about how you got out of your car and stepped in the mud puddle just before your big presentation?
Use this same method of personal, one-on-one friend communication with your readers as well.
Post on your blog as often as possible, and we’re talking every day or two. Encourage your list to subscribe to Feedburner or the equivalent so they know when you add a new post.
Your readers will realize you’re a real person who isn’t out to pitch them a new product every 5 minutes. And they’ll gladly read your sales emails much more readily when they know there is a real live human being who is sending them these messages.
2: Use Your Own Voice
How many emails do you receive that say something along the lines of, “Buy this product – this product is the greatest product ever – you will be sorry if you miss this – so rush right over and buy it now.”
Yeah. Same old stuff, over and over again.
There is a marketer (or maybe several, but I’m thinking of one in particular) who sells MASSIVE quantities of this exact type of emails as a swipe file to new marketers.
Like a brand-new marketer couldn’t write their own 25 word email that basically says, “GO BUY THIS NOW!”
People are TIRED of getting these emails. You’re tired of getting these emails. I’m tired of getting these emails.
Same phrases, same message, same B.S.
If you’re not going to stand apart from the crowd, then you’re going to have to share the same crumbs they’re getting.
Instead, take 30 minutes and write your own promotional email in your own voice.
Forget hype. Be sincere. Be honest. “Hey, this product isn’t for everyone. I don’t even know if it’s for you. But if you have this problem, then maybe this is your solution. Check it out and decide if it’s right for you, because I know it’s worked like crazy for some people. And it’s on sale right now, too.”
I’ve written emails where I basically tell people not to buy something unless they really really want it or need it. “Don’t buy this if you already know how to do xyz.” “Don’t buy this if you’re not going to be doing this type of marketing.” This is only for people who want (fill in the blank.) It’s like I’m trying to talk them out of it, which paradoxically often results in more sales, not fewer.
But the point isn’t tricking them into buying; it’s to be honest. Because you know what? That latest, greatest product you’re promoting ISN’T what everyone on your list needs. Some of them, sure. The rest of them, no.
Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to open an email that says, “Here’s a new product, thought you might want to know, but please don’t buy it if you’re not going to use it.”
The first time I got an email like that, I bought the product without even reading the sales letter. True story. I was just so happy that someone wasn’t ramming a sale down my throat, that I jumped at the chance to buy it.
Weird but true.
My point is, be you. Be honest. Talk to your readers as though they are your best friends and you don’t want to lose your best friends by acting like a carnival barker who is here today and pulled up stakes (vanished) tomorrow with their money.
3: Email a LOT
This is the one where people like to argue with me, and I understand that.
You’ve heard over and over again that you shouldn’t email too often, or you’ll upset your subscribers, right?
After all, every time you email, there is the potential that a subscriber will hit the unsubscribe button.
Do you know what the potential is when you DON’T email? Nothing. No opens, no clicks, no sales… not even any relationship building.
Do you want people to open and read your emails? Then send out those emails EVERY DAY.
Here’s why:
First, almost no one will see every email you send out. Let’s say you’ve got a sale on one of your products. Don’t you think your readers might like to know about it? But if they miss the one and only email you send that lets them know, then they’ve missed out on the discount and you LOST a sale.
Second, send emails at different times. I opened someone’s email just yesterday, decided I was VERY interested in the new membership he was selling, clicked the link and discovered it was no longer available.
What happened? This particular marketer only sends out emails at 1:00 a.m. my time, so I don’t even see most of his emails in the avalanche of mail I get before I wake up.
Third, if you’re sending email once a week or once a month, your readers are forgetting who the heck you are. And when you finally do send an email, they think it’s spam.
Fourth, if you mail more often, you will make more money. Don’t take my word on this, just do it for one month. Send out one email per day, every day, for 30 days. Put a promotion in each one. See if you haven’t made more – a LOT more – money during that time period than during the previous month.
And by the way, I’m not saying JUST send out a promotion in each email. Make sure you have some content in there as well, even if it’s just an amusing anecdote.
4: Think of affiliate marketing as a BUSINESS
This isn’t a hobby, nor is it an add-on for an additional income stream.
Even if you go on vacation, be prepared to send out an email every day. Schedule them in advance or write them on vacation. Either way, affiliate marketing to your list is a business that you can’t just jump into when you need cash and forget about the rest of the time.
You don’t have many support issues, since the product owners handle this. You don’t have to worry about creating products, sales pages and so forth. You don’t have to drive traffic, unless it’s to build your list bigger.
With so much you don’t have to do, there’s no reason not to focus your time and energy into building relationships with your list and promoting to them every single day.
Affiliate marketing can be some of the easiest money you’ve ever made, if you put in the time and effort to make it a real business.
Hi, it’s Corey and this is my new website. Stay tuned… I’ll have great things to share!
For starters, here’s an article I think you’ll enjoy…
It’s called: “Make the Leap to Home Business Success”
If you are going to build a successful home business, you need 3 “intangibles.” These are things that must come from WITHIN you.
===> Intangible 1 <===
First, you must have a strong WHY.
Why must you make a home business work? What’s driving you? What is it that you CAN’T have in your life anymore and/or what is it that you absolutely MUST HAVE now?
For me, I couldn’t stand working 12+ hours a day anymore and missing the experience of my children growing up. I also absolutely HAD TO HAVE the freedom of being able to control my life and finances through a little box that I could carry with me anywhere in the world and not be tied to anyone’s time pressures or demands but my own. That was my carrot and my stick. I felt a great pain deep in my gut of missing out on my children’s lives and the incredible freedom that succeeding in this business would provide for me. I found my why. You MUST find yours.
===> Intangible 2 <===
You must BELIEVE that it is possible.
If you don’t believe that it’s POSSIBLE for you to succeed in a home business or make your living on the Internet, you won’t. It’s that simple.
For me, figuring out that it was possible was just a matter of realizing that many other people were ALREADY making great money with a home business online. If they could do it, I could too. It would just be a matter of figuring out what those people were doing and then adapting it to my situation.
There is no shortage of undeniable PROOF that people (millions of them) are making money online in many different ways. Just get online and do some research and you’ll find countless testimonials and stories of REAL PEOPLE making real money on the Internet. Or head to your local bookstore and you’ll find the same documented evidence of this fact. Truth is, it’s getting easier and easier to start and succeed in a home based business. This is primarily because of the Internet and affiliate marketing.
I’ve always said that “affiliate marketing” is the job of the future. In the “old” days, you had to go to a potential employer, apply for the position and hope for the best. Now you can simply go to any company you want, fill out their affiliate application and start work immediately. Affiliates are the new working class. Believe me, making money with affiliate programs or making your living on the Internet is WAY MORE than possible. It is pretty much (or will be soon enough) unavoidable now. Affiliate marketing is the “job” of the future that’s here TODAY.
===> Intangible 3 <===
You must be willing to MAKE THE LEAP.
Ready, FIRE, then aim… This is the operating philosophy you MUST adopt to succeed with an Internet home business.
That’s backwards for most people who like to aim before they fire. The fact is the Internet is a moving target… The only thing constant about it is change. You need to stop analyzing the game and simply jump into it. You can’t learn from the outside… You have to be IN THE RING to truly understand it.
The lesson here is that you will never really be READY to start a home based business. You simply have to start one. This is what I call “Making the Leap.”
The good news is that the cost of failure on the Internet is very small. In the “brick and mortar” world you need to evaluate things very carefully before you decide to open up a business. It’s almost always necessary to invest thousands of dollars to get an offline business off the ground. However, on the Internet you can often start a successful business for less than $100. In fact, Plug-In Profit Site is a really good example of this.
You simply need get IN THE GAME… Each moment that you stay “out there,” you’re wasting valuable time that you could be learning and skills necessary to become a successful affiliate marketer. In fact, if you’re not in the game yet, you’re ALREADY behind the times. Come on… You can do it! Make the leap to becoming a successful home based business owner today!
About the author: Stone Evans was a washed up restaurant worker desperately searching for a way to save his family when he discovered the internet and affiliate marketing… 24 months later he finally cracked the code and started earning over $10,000 per month. Now the same system that saved him is available to you here >>
